Wellington, NZ - Botanical Gardens

Today we visited the capital of New Zealand: Wellington. It was our first stop on the North island of New Zealand. It was nice today since we were docked instead of tendering. Tendering is always a pain, although we were docked away from the city.

The ship offered day passes for busing from the port into downtown for $8 per person. Brian thought that was too expensive so he convinced me to walk into the city. I put on my pedometer today to figure out our distance of walking. It was about a 15-minute walk to the city and the bus was supposed to take 10 minutes. It was not bad.

The one thing I wanted to do today was ride the Wellington cable car. I showed Brian where it was on the map (it was a map with pictures on it so I pointed to the cable car). We went walking towards it. As we continued up hill for a while, I realized the picture on the map showed the cable car at the top of the hill (where you get off at the top and not where you are supposed to get on). Oh, I was not very happy.

Walking up a really big hill is not what I had in mind for the day. The plan was to ride the cable car up the hill then walk down through the Botanical Gardens. Once we realized the mistake, we were almost to the top. (Side note: While stopping to read the map on the street, two different New Zealanders asked us if we needed help. Everyone in New Zealand that we have met has been very helpful).

As we continued up the hill, I got over the fact we would not be riding the cable car. We walked through the large Botanic Gardens. It was pretty and again another great weather day. When we finally got to the top, we saw the cable car. It was neat to see but there were many people in it. It did not look like that much fun to ride it so it made me feel a little better.

We took pictures of the cable car while it headed down the hill. Setting up our camera timer was a bit of a challenge but Brian set it up perfectly and caught the car in motion as it passed us. Then we decided to walk back down through the Botanical Garden on a different path. Again it was very beautiful and we enjoyed our scenic walk.

The plan for the day was to see everything in the morning then go get our laptop, find internet and call home. So we could have done the cable car, but I did not want to miss out on calling home. We got back on the ship and had lunch then walked back into the city to find internet around 1pm which was 7pm at home the day prior (we are 18 hours ahead now).

We found a wireless internet package (cafe net) and purchased unlimited 24-hour downtown wifi access for $10 NZD. Then we called our family back home via Skype. Those on the computers could see video of us on the streets of Wellington in downtown. Since the weather was warm, people were wearing shorts and T-shirts. (Again, sorry for everyone back home in the freezing cold temperatures. Try and stay warm. I guess as least you have heat unlike much of Europe with their gas crisis). It was nice to talk to everyone back home that we do miss!

Today we walked 6.2 miles (10km) which is 16,000 steps. We are a little tried due to all the activities we have been doing the last few days.


We got back on the ship and now are sailing to Whakaari (the White Island volcano). You can view a live camera on the island here:

http://www.geonet.org.nz/whiteisland.html

We will be seeing it via our cruise ship tomorrow, as we will be at sea all day. We are looking forward to our sea day. We will be able to sleep in for the last night on this trip. We better enjoy it. The flights home will be rough!

Local Food

From talking to locals we have learned several things about Australian food and tastes. In particular, we were told that Australians do not like combining chocolate with anything salty. Chocolate covered pretzels are off limits. The combination of chocolate and peanut butter is also considered disgusting. No Reeses peanut butter cups down under. We were also told that Australians find pop tarts quite fascinating (although not on the food topic, when visiting the U.S. we hear they really like squirrels since they don’t have them here).

One Australian desert we heard about was fairy bread. It is basically just white bread with butter and sprinkles (colored cake sprinkles) on top. It is cut up and served at parties. At cookouts hotdogs are usually served wrapped in a piece of bread, and not on hot dog buns.

Earlier in the trip we tried vegemite. We did not know how to describe it. One accurate description we were given was “salty yuck.” It has a yeasty and salty taste that you can grow to love, but is not too appealing the first time you try it. I thought it was really disgusting. It was so bad we threw it out instead of bringing it home for others to try.