Taupo to Wellington, by bus

January 8, 2024

I really liked The Gables motel. The room would make the perfect tiny cabin, probably not too expensive to build. I used a measuring app on my phone and sketched out all the dimensions for future reference.

R. called a cab to take our bags to the bus stop (we had a few hours before it arrived but had to get out of the room) and I took a walk along the lake shore to the harbor at the mouth of the river. Everyone bustling around hopping on boats for excursions made me wish we’d done one, but you can’t do everything. I popped into the Taupo museum. Small but nicely done, it was all about geology and logging, with one room dedicated to Māori artifacts. Many pictures of the town throughout its short history. I don’t know why people idealize the past. The past always seems to be a dirty mud pit hellhole. Taupo used to be considered the dustiest city in New Zealand due to all the pumice in the soil – ground down by wagons etc. on unpaved roads.

The bus ride today was great thanks to constantly changing landscapes. We drove along Lake Taupo for the first half hour, passing lakeside settlements. The houses in new developments on the outskirts of the town were cool modern design with metal roofs I liked.

Why is the lake so blue and clear? Such beautiful colors.

After leaving the lake we came into an area of pine forest with distant volcano views.

The forest disappeared and we were surrounded by low scrub on what I presume is an ancient lava flow.

This transitioned to rolling green hills and finally – sheep! I was promised sheep and they finally appeared.

Sorry not a great picture. That’s the one frustration with riding the bus. So much to see and no way to stop and take photos.

We stopped for a lunch/pee break at 2:30 in Taihape, “the gumboot capital of the world.”

It was a nice-looking town nestled in rolling hills, but the shopping area along the highway wasn’t great. We walked as far as we could in the 20-minute break, but never found cute.

I will soon go on a rant about the ugly awning/overhang culture here. These are by no means the ugliest though the whole shopping area was very unappealing.

After this the landscape widened out to what I’d characterize as the Central Valley in California but prettier and greener with more interesting mountains to the east and west. Farms and small towns.

The driver had to take a detour so instead of continuing down Highway 1, we detoured to Highway 59 and got to drive along the Tasman sea! A new sea for me! I was a bit awestruck. It’s a big deal to see a new sea.

I was struggling to stay awake given I was sitting on the west side of the bus and the sun had been beating in on me for hours, so Wellington caught me by surprise. I blinked and suddenly we driving along a bay surrounded by steep mountains, the city perched on them. After passing through an industrial port area our terminus was the train station.

Our talkative cab driver told us that kids were on summer break through the end of the month, and many businesses and offices were still closed – as we’d surmised from our experiences.

We checked into our very cool hotel, the Naumi. Our room is great! That’s the problem with travel. Half of me wishes I could just hang out and take baths and enjoy the room, but we’ve got to explore the city.

The hotel is located on Cuba Street, on of two streets in the entire city my guide book called out as being “hip.” When only two streets are hip in a whole city I get nervous, but Cuba street was nice with many historic buildings, but now we need to talk about the awnings. It’s time.

Every shopping district we’ve been to  in New Zealand has awful awnings tacked on to otherwise beautiful buildings sometime in the last 40 years at seemingly the lowest cost possible. I don’t know how much it rains here (okay I looked it up – 50 inches) but wow…way to make a pretty street look like burning man.

We popped into a restaurant for a drink, then had dinner at Ombra, a highly-rated restaurant we didn’t think we’d be able to get into without a reservation, but it was after 8 and beginning to clear out.

Prices are fine here (San Francisco equivalent or a bit cheaper) once you do the math. $1 NZ is 66 cents U.S., so I’ve been doing sloppy math trying to divide everything into thirds.

This was another epic day, with literal twists and turns. This vacation is…picture me doing explosions with my hands.