New Zealand 12 (or ... Wellington and beyond)

13-April-2011

We rented a car in Wellington to drive to the airport in Aukland, but we couldn't pick up the car until noon. We were a little disappointed in that, but it ended up working out really well, because we got to walk around Wellington some before leaving.

We walked around downtown and saw the Parliament building, which is cool in a funky way, but I have to say that ...
... it doesn't really do it for me aesthetically. Personally anyway. It looks like a big robot head sticking up out of the landscape. And I'm a boy, you'd think that sort of thing would really appeal to me!

We went up a cable car tram funicular thingy to the botanical gardens that overlook the city. It's a pretty cool cable car, and it gets you a great view of the city.

You can see the cable car rails there, and, strangely, we don't have a single good photo of one of the cars going up and down. It's not just a tourist attraction, either. There's a stop mid-way up the hill that lets out to Victoria University. But still... it's mostly touristy.

Once at the top, we wandered around the cable car museum, and then around the botanic gardens. Here are some pictures of things I can't identify, but really liked the look of.

Oh wait, I like the look of that one, and I CAN identify it. No, not the Pongas... Lynne!


As I implied, this section is not devoted to the biologist in me, as I cannot name one of these plants, or tell you anything about them... I just thought they looked cool and different. Well, I could ... this one's Frank, and it's in the Botanic Garden in Wellington...


A closer view of Frank...

And here's a funky, knobby, bubbly tree. Again... I dunno nuthin' bout it...



And here's a plant that I really liked the leaf pattern. I saw one of these on the bike ride in Nelson (in the wild!), and took a picture of it, but it was nowhere near the size of this one.


And then we left the botanic garden, and scurried down the mountain and through town to pick up our rental car and head north...

After just leaving Wellington, it feels like we're way out in the countryside.

In the countryside on the wrong side of the road of course, but in the countryside. The hardest thing about driving on the left for me was using my left hand to shift the manual transmission. And occasionally turning on the wipers when you wanted to use your turn signal. But other than that... not too bad.

It was even harder to shift with your left hand when you were using it to hold the camera up behind the passenger's head and take a picture of the road, the car, and how everything was backwards. Um.... luckily, I would never do this, and, .... um, ... we had picked up a hitchhiker, yeah, a hitchhiker, and he agreed to take a couple pictures for us.

Beautiful countryside, and sheep. Where are you? Yes, New Zealand!


Lot's and lots of beautiful countryside and sheep....


I could go on with that line of writing, but I shant. Just know that if you can't think of anywhere that you can find an abundance of sheep and beautiful countryside, you can always find that in New Zealand.


We continued north, and after driving for so long through...... beautiful countryside and sheep, it was very odd that the road went through a very desert-y area sort of the middle-south of the north island. And off to our left was a peak breaking through the clouds.

You can see that the terrain is totally different, and the mountain is there, but it just doesn't do it justice (do pictures ever?). It was really spectacular. A closer view of the peak ....

I think it's either Mount Tongariro or Mount Ruapehu. Just south of Lake Taupo.

And then it was starting to get late, and we needed a place to stay, but we had to stop and check out the sunset over the lake. Complete with black swans.


Umm... hungry black swans I might add....

We ran. And we only lost one finger between the two of us.

Not really, of course.

We got a motel room in Taupo for the night, and prepared for the final push to Aukland, and our last day on vacation. Waaahhh...