North Island to South Island
Jan. 10, 2024, Wellington to Christchurch – A BIG DAY.
I was sorry leave Wellington, but as I keep reminding myself, this is an overview trip. Time to hop on the ferry and train and see new things. We had to wake up too early, but the sun rises too early so all we had to do was leave all the curtains open to wake naturally.
The ferry terminal felt more like an airport, with a row of check-in desks where they weighed our suitcases and even tagged them through to the train to Christchurch. A woman in line in front of me had the best tattoo – a woman face-planting into a cake. The art was simple but oh did it capture how I’ve been feeling at work lately!
The ferry, Kaitaki, was a huge car and truck ferry, nearly a cruise ship.
Unbeknownst to me, R. had booked upgraded tickets for the trip and we got access to a special lounge area that included breakfast. I was so happy to have food and drink and a safe-ish place to leave our packs while we ran around the boat. Being a city person, an uncomfortable part of travel is being separated from my belongings and having to trust they’ll be there when I get back and/or arrive somewhere. When we took the ferry to Moorea and handed our bags over to a guy who threw them onto a giant steel wagon, a big part of me thought, we’ll never see those again. Gradually though, I began to relax and trust the process, even though it’s a new one at every turn.
The ferry, like most of what we’ve experienced in New Zealand, was exceptionally neat and clean and comfortable. They even had a movie theater and a magic show for the kids. And, um, me. I spent most of the 3+ hours outdoors, walking back and forth from port to starboard (look at me using sailing terms) to see the views.
Which were amazing. Thankfully the sea was calm. A chart in the terminal indicated it could get very, very rough. The semi trucks onboard were lashed to the deck with huge chains.
When we got into the wooded channels of the south island, we saw many off-the-grid houses, clearly only accessible by boat. Pretty setting, but too remote for my taste. No Thai food, no pizza delivery.
We arrived at Picton, where we’d catch a train to Christchurch. The train…aka The Coastal Pacific Scenic Plus Experience. We’d been eagerly awaiting this journey! It was a bit of a splurge, but I felt like it would be a once-in-a-lifetime voyage and a really memorable and relaxing day.
Explore the unique cultural and culinary flavours of our Pacific coast as it glides by your window aboard our Coastal Pacific Scenic Plus dining experience. While you ease back and enjoy the seaside scenery and intimate views of Marlborough’s world-famous vineyards, we’ll be serving you a menu filled with freshly picked ingredients from the lands you pass through.
We’d hoped to take many trains around New Zealand but all the trains on the north island were offline over the holiday for track maintenance. We booked this one, and I was tempted by a trans-alpine journey, but you had to go to the coast and back in one day and it seemed like too much time in a seat (10+ hours) and too much of the same scenery. Plus $$.
Somehow we ended up being the last people off the boat and got to chit chat with the exiting crew. They directed us to the train station a few hundred yards up the road…a possibly historic building ruined by hosting a Subway sandwich chain at one end. We checked in and asked the woman if we should get lunch before boarding at 1:30, and she said oh no, they feed you well on that train. Woo-hoo!
That’s our ferry. I can’t explain the strange line of people heading into the sea.
The weather had been flip-flopping from gray and story to sunny all day, and for now it was sunny and hot. We wandered over to the beach/harbor and I left R. in the shade communing with seagulls and walked out onto the docks.
A woman near me screamed and pointed and there was a manta ray! She apologized for screaming and I assured her I was grateful.
I live in a city and don’t normally see manta rays swimming around. Nature!!
Half an hour later we boarded the train. The car was really nice, with huge windows and white table cloths. I was initially put off by the seating configuration–four seats (two on each side) facing a table…meaning we’d be knee to knee with strangers for the whole day, some of us sitting backwards. I really didn’t want to make small talk. I wanted to stare out the window and take it all in as I voyaged further south than I’d ever been in my life.
I waited anxiously to see who our traveling companions would be. At the moment there were only eight other people in the car that could easily hold 60, and then, with a jerk, the train pulled out of the station. It was just us! We had the whole car to ourselves!
A serious, meticulously made up woman in a black skirt, black shirt, and jaunty black and white scarf (the uniform of the train staff) welcomed us, I asked where the rest of the passengers were, and she explained that this was the first day they’d run one of the fancy cars on this route so people didn’t know about it yet. I’d lucked onto it. Two more women in uniform came into the car and she introduced them. One would be in charge of our dining and the other was…our server? Not quite sure, but she was down to earth and funny, like she’d rather sneak out for a smoke with us than go on about the pinot grigio. The serious woman awkwardly recited a Maori greeting of some sort. Hard to imagine there was a traditional blessing for tourists on a wine train.
The first leg of the trip was through Marlborough wine country. The vines were huge and very leafy compared to what I’m used to seeing in Napa and Sonoma. More water? Beyond, rolling golden hills in the “kind of like California but not really” way things often are here.
The wine and dine part of the trip was fine but not amazing. The serious woman asked for our feedback as they weren’t quite sure how to handle dining for this portion of trip, from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. They assumed we’d eaten lunch, however coming from the ferry we hadn’t, and I was starving. Our first snack, half an hour in, was two mussels, two pieces of beef on tiny toast, and a scoop of sorbet, and a wine-tasting flight of four barely-filled glasses. Fortunately the fun server was happy to top up on our favorites, and I became a bit tipsy and forgot I was starving.
My favorite part of the trip was the open-air train car. Loud, noisy, windy–amazing. It felt like breaking the rules to be able to hang out there and I couldn’t believe it wasn’t packed at every moment. From here I could finally get some good photos without window glare.
The train headed east, up and over hills, and we were on the coast, zipping by long lonely stretches of deserted black sand beaches littered with driftwood. This is the hard part, passing all this by and being intrigued and not being able to stop and explore.
The highway ran alongside us most of the way, so it would be possible to explore all this by car or camper, as many Kiwi’s seemed to be doing.
Beach ferns!
The weather turned gray and windy and we headed inland to a landscape of rolling hills and farms and SHEEP. I took up residence on the other side of the car in an empty seat and tried to get a good video of massive quantities of sheep, preferably running away from the train. It was tough because we were moving quickly, so I had to anticipate where sheep might be and start the video in advance. Here’s a decent one:
I expected a surprise reveal, another landscape change, but after passing through sparsely-populated suburbs we arrived in Christchurch. It wasn’t what I expected. A low-rise city on a flat plain, the mountains distant and invisible thanks to cloud cover.
The short cab ride to our hotel didn’t improve my opinion of the place. I don’t know what to compare it to. It had a suburban vibe, things felt dispersed like there wasn’t a core. It’s not fair to critique the place as many historic buildings and whole neighborhoods were destroyed in the catastrophic series of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 (which I will talk more about later), so it wasn’t what it once was.
Our hotel was just okay. I think they thought they were a boutique hotel but no. The walls of our room were mostly blank. One print. The lighting was awful–all on or all off. All on being interrogation-level with no dimmers. We set up the desk lamp strategically so we could have some mood lighting without going blind.
We weren’t hungry after our snack and wine day so we didn’t bother with dinner. By some freaking miracle there was a club, Boo’s Whiskey Bar, two blocks away that promised live music. They had an open mic night and great cocktails. The place wasn’t crowded, and the guitar-playing MC opened the night by detailing how he knew everyone there but us.
I was so happy to finally be around actual real New Zealand people doing normal things in the town where they lived. This felt like a first as, aside from bus riding, we’ve been in tourist situations. It was a good end to a crazy day of so much travel and so many new things to see!
Windy Wellington
Jan. 9th, 2024
I like Wellington and can’t put my finger on why. I immediately felt comfortable when we arrived, like oh this is a city and I get it in a way I never got Auckland. Auckland seemed like a sprawling confusing jumble and not cohesive. I feel guilty about making a snap judgement, like if I only spent a little more time and went to such and such a neighborhood I’d be in love. Still, I felt a constant sense of no there there, which isn’t fair, especially with everyone being away on holiday.
Anyway, Wellington has flyers for bands and events stuck all over things. People have nose rings and colored hair. A crazy old punk rocker was playing guitar and yelling a song consisting almost entirely of profanities. I’m not sure why that made me laugh.
The downtown feels like a downtown with fun stores I want to shop in.
The neighborhoods run up the sides of hills, with stairways and paths everywhere. Is it just the hills making me feel at home? Honestly though, this place makes San Francisco look flat. These hills are steep! Our Uber driver said people compare this place to SF, but if anything it’s more like portions of Marin/Sausalito with a small downtown core of high rises. Much more open and green space. What’s interesting is the transition from dense downtown to single family homes is – no transition. You just cross a street.
The wind, as promised, was uncomfortably strong in certain areas. We had lame bagels a few blocks from the hotel this morning and I had to hold on to the plastic basket to keep it from blowing away. First destination: a cable car/funicular, which didn’t feel like it traveled far but when we got off we were suddenly hundreds of feet above the city.
We wandered through charming neighborhoods with cute houses. I don’t want to be disloyal but the vegetation is so lush and the views so dramatic – it’s prettier than San Francisco in many places! Blah! I feel like that about New Zealand in general – a prettier California. Like the best day in spring everywhere. I’m not going to sell my house and move here because of that. I never wanted to live in the country and I like my cultural amenities, but it definitely tones down my “California is the best place in the world” rhetoric.
We had a lame lunch at a pub in downtown. Tourist bad luck/starving needed to eat. We walked a few blocks to the Parliament (Wellington is the capital city) where I’d hoped we could take a tour, but they were sold out for the day. The building is odd. I appreciate wanting to do something different but it doesn’t quite work for me.
I walked along the waterfront on my way back to the hotel and was captivated by teens playing in the water in what looked like an industrial area. People don’t jump in the water in San Francisco in the downtown like this. I guess you could, although I suspect the water is warmer here. Embarrassed to admit I never touched it.
Oh and in exciting news – I saw a jellyfish. First big one I’ve seen in the wild.
Next stop, Weta Workshop. I’ll let them speak for themselves here before I go on a rant.
Wētā Workshop has catapulted onto the world stage, thanks in part, to the creation of sets, costumes, armour, weapons, creatures, miniatures and more for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. From the sweeping landscapes of Middle-earth to the lush forests of Pandora in the movie Avatar, we’ve since gone on to design imaginary worlds for many more blockbuster films and TV shows. But don’t take our word for it, visit us, and experience our magic for yourself.
Blah blah blah. I was excited because my guide book said they had sets from their remake of Thunderbirds, originally a 1960’s sci fi series filmed with puppets and elaborate sets. I love this series so much, and the book said you could sit in a full-size plane.
We arrived early and the Uber driver pointed out a bus and said they’d be using that to drive us all around. Nope. We waited for the tour in the gift shop, which had lots of nice things if you were into Lord of the Rings paraphernalia – and some people really were. I was happy to find a display of a few Thunderbirds models, though they were haphazardly thrown in a case with models from other shows and a couple of orange juicers. ??
Our tour guide gathered our group (about 20 people) and admonished us that we were not allowed to take any photos due to laws/secrecy/contracts/etc. which made the tour sound promising. She herded us into room one, where we (awkwardly standing) watched a movie about the founding of Weta. Then she herded into another small room where we (awkwardly standing) watched a movie about how they make rubbery faces to make people look like vampires or whatever, and there were samples of the process lining the room. From there we went into a small room full of swords and other Lord of the Rings props, which we weren’t allowed to touch or photograph…except gosh darn it we looked like such responsible people it might be okay to pass around one sword.
Here we learned that a big part of their business now is making reproductions, and there was a small window into an actual workshop, possibly a blacksmith shop, and another small window into a room with a CnC machine slowly cutting a rhino out of a foam material. That was as close as we got to the workshops. Grrrrrrrrr.
Finally, we went into a room with full-sized costumes that actors wore in movies. That interested me as there were sci fi outfits from movies I’d seen and the guide had information about the difficulty of getting in and out of them.
The tour ended in a room where the guide promoted a clay-like model-making material called Pal Tiya people in Weta developed that you can form on top of tinfoil and it literally turns to stone and can be used outdoors. I sigh as I write about it because yes I’m interested but, really? This has what to do with the tour? We were encouraged to make a sculpture out of tinfoil or use some props and take a selfie against a green screen and choose a background. My hopes rose for a moment, thinking I could hold up a real sword with a flaming volcano from Mordor, but no. The props were not from the rooms we’d just visited. Maybe they tried that and people stole everything, because, people. All there was was some lame ass capes and such like you’d have in a selfie booth at a Halloween party. Sad.
We asked if we could leave, and did, and not through the gift shop. Such a disappointment but this did feel like a checkbox we needed to check while in Wellington.
Maybe the only real part of Weta Workshop we saw, while waiting for our Uber
We had dinner at Kisa, a well-rated middle-eastern restaurant near our hotel and it was delicious. Today was another day full of so many new sights and experiences, my mind is again blown. So happy to be here, doing all this. : )
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.
Roadtripz and Other Journeys 