A Midwinter Picnic

The weather for Hannah's second day was scheduled to largely behave itself so it seemed the best day we had to venture up to the botanic gardens. I'm not quite sure why I always prioritise the gardens so much whenever I have visitors to show around but I think it's largely because I don't often make a point of going there or venture near them in my day to day life and secondarily because the cable car goes up there and is such an icon of the city within itself.

Once again making use of Wellington's brilliant bus system, we made our way into town and got of at a supermarket in the CBD. We had packed with us a blanket, plates and other generally useful picnic items; all we were missing was the food.

Although the weather was behaving itself in that it wasn't raining on us and the wind was relatively calm, it was rather cool given the time of year so we were both dressed accordingly. I'm sure there aren't many countries where winter time picnics are a feasible or reasonable option, point for New Zealand right there.

We walked up towards cable car lane and travelled up to the gardens, that being the only acceptable means of transportation up there. There is of course pedestrian and vehicle access around the place but the cable car is way cooler and I love taking any opportunity I get to ride on it.

At the top we wandered around parts of the garden I had looked at with Beckett several months before, as well as parts that Beckett and I hadn't bothered to see. There's an old Scout Hall (I'm not sure if it's still actively used or not) that we walked past which Hannah was particularly interested. Her brother at home had been involved in Scouts so their family by default had been heavily involved with his Scout unit.

After an hour or so, we found a nice spot near the sound - shell to lay down our blanket and have something to eat. We'd organised ourself some sandwich stuff, muesli bars and some orange juice; all classic picnic fare. Fortunately the grass was dry enough so as not to soak us or the blanket we had with us.

During the summer the sound - shell hosts a series of free musical events crossing a range of styles and appealing to a variety of different audiences. In my teen years I'd often go along with Mum to a couple of them and we'd sit around the same spot Hannah and I were sat at for our picnic. Usually we took some fish and chips with us or easy to eat picnic type food with a few beers. It was nice being able to revisit that spot with a friend and introduce them to such a cool little place.

We spent some more time wandering the gardens after lunch, stopping by one of the information centre / observation deck spots to learn about the various enormous trees dotted around the gardens. There are all sorts of interesting plants there from around the world and it's great being able to read about them all and their various history's and uses.

In total we probably chilled around the gardens for a good four or five hours which was enough to give them a good go. We took the cable car back down and had a much more peaceful trip than I'd had with Beckett, completely free of unfortunate incidents with children.

My next post here will be about our trip over to Wellington Zoo, the coolest little zoo there is.

Playing Host Again

A couple of months after Beckett's visit to Wellington, another one of my good friends from Wisconsin came all the way across the world to see me.

Hannah, who was my prom date in high school at Fort, decided to do a semester on exchange down at Otago University in Dunedin, after much convincing from me that New Zealand was a much better exchange option than going to England (take that so called motherland!).

She arrived a couple of weeks before the start of the New Zealand second semester in Auckland and made her way down country, spending time with friends along the way near Tauranga and seeing a bit of the New Zealand landscape before arriving to spend about 3 days with me in Wellington.

The closest her bus got to my house was Wellington airport (15 minute walk) so I walked down to meet her and hear tales of her adventures thus far.

Unfortunately with the time of year she arrived at, the weather was disinclined to behave in a particularly accommodating manner, so my loose list of options for things to do was entirely weather dependant. It sounded like she'd experienced okay weather in her travels prior to Wellington which was lucky.

Also unfortunately, I had to work the time that she was there so I was dead - tired with starting at 2 AM and then going out and doing things all day but it was a small sacrifice to make for the sake of showing a good friend all of the cool stuff in my hometown.

On her first day in town, it rained torrentially for about 8 hours. I'd already decided that the weather was looking sketchy so the best plan was to visit Te Papa, the National Museum.

We were lucky enough to make it to the bus stop, into town and inside of the building before the real rain started but when that set in we were pretty well restricted to spending the whole day there. Thankfully there's about 3 full days worth of interesting stuff to check out inside the museum.

I was determined to get to Te Papa with Hannah as I didn't quite manage to find time with Beckett and it would have been an absolute crime to have hosted two visitors in Wellington without paying it a visit.

Hannah seemed to really enjoy the areas of the museum pertaining to New Zealand history and Maori culture which was cool to see. I made sure we got in on a showing of Golden Days as well, a must - do for all visitors. I think she found that pretty interesting as well, I know I always get a good laugh out of it even with having seen it about 50 times.

It surprised me actually how much it all interested her. She spent a long time reading through everything while I found ways to keep my short attention span continuously occupied.

We stopped for a lunch and coffee break at the cafe after a couple of hours. I had one of the better coffees I've had in the city and a piece of cheesecake because sometimes it's fun to eat cheesecake for lunch.

After lunch we went back to perusing the museum and stopped in at the art gallery there. I don't generally connect well with visual art, mostly because I know nothing about it and I need explanations of what the thought or context is behind pieces for them to hold my interest. I do enjoy taking wild guesses whilst walking through galleries though and the Te Papa gallery is rather fantastic. At the time they also had a magnetic poetry board set up in there so naturally I left a brief composition on that.

In the sculpture section we got talking to one of the volunteers, an older guy who LOVED to talk. I think he probably would have kept going all day if we hadn't cut him short after about half an hour of him telling us all sorts of stories about his half Chinese grand - daughter and his time at the museum.

When we finally managed to break out of conversation with him, we finished wandering that part of the museum, looked around for another couple of hours, essentially visiting every part of the museum (including the earthquake house) until we were both sufficiently exhausted.

Fortunately by the time we left the rain had softened a bit and we didn't get terribly wet trying to make our way to the bus stop. We must have been in good favour somehow with the weather gods to have not gotten soaked at some point through the day.

We hopped a bus back to Miramar, organised dinner, set up sleeping arrangements (I gave up my bed and slept on a mattress on the floor instead) and I crashed out early, ready to be up at 1 AM to get going for work.

The next post here will be about our adventure on the second day through the Wellington Botanical Gardens.

Beckett's Last Day

With an intense week of travel and activity behind us, Beckett's last day in Wellington was a truly New Zealand day in that it was very laid back. We were both tired and neither of us was too interested in doing much in the way of sight - seeing.

I would have liked to have shown him around Te Papa, the national museum in the middle of the city, but when you don't have the energy it's a big ask to wander around a museum for hours. Instead we slept in late and settled into some quiet drinking couple with general R & R.

We went into town and played pool along some of the iconic Cuba Street bars which is always a good way to spend a chilled out day. Beckett's flight the next day was an early one so we didn't have too big a night or anything but it definitely wasn't a day wasted.

I think it was a good way to reflect on the trip we'd had and share some quality stress - free hang time before we said goodbye for an indefinite length of time once again. It's not very often you find friends that are willing to fly halfway across the world to see you for just a week and if I've learned anything in life so far, it's that those are the people who stick around in your life for a long time. In saying that they're also the genuine kind of people that you want to be in your life for a very long time.

I realise now that writing this, I have seen Beckett every year since my exchange, except for 2015 but with a trip to North America planned later in the year I'm sure we'll make it happen. That's a pretty cool claim to be able to make for friends that live on opposite sides of the world from each other.

To cap off the series of blog posts that have been written about our adventure across the North Island of New Zealand and Wellington City, I woke up at about 4 AM to drive Beckett to the airport the next morning. As is always the case at that time of day, we were both exhausted, it was dark and it felt like the middle of the night. I dropped him off there with his bags, said a quick goodbye and left him to his own devices to check in and such as I drove back toward home.

Naturally, when I got back to the house (thankfully I live about 3 minutes drive from the airport) I went straight to sleep. The accumulative lack of sleep over the trip seemed to catch up with me in one hit and I slept until about 2 PM. I woke up still feeling a little groggy, made myself a cup of black instant coffee and stared out my kitchen window as I often do mindlessly during the wake - up routine.

As I looked out to the neighbours yard with the sun shining in on it, the surreal nature of the previous week dawned upon me. If there hadn't been a half bottle of Duty Free tequila in my cupboard, I'm not sure I would've believed it and so having just woken up in the middle of the afternoon, I poured myself a tequila shot and drank to the raw power of friendship.

Photo by CMDR Shane on Unsplash

Showing Off My City

On day 1 of the 2 days left at our disposal, Wellington put on an absolute stunner. The decision as to what to do was pretty much made for us so we caught a bus to the CBD and set off on a cable car adventure.

The iconic Wellington cable car is a must see for anyone with a bit of spare time in the city and it leads to another one of the city's must see sites, the Botanical Gardens. I hadn't taken the cable car for a good few years so it was a novel experience for me as well as Beckett.

We bought our tickets from the old school ticketing booth, proceeded through the gates into the dingy tunnel at the bottom of the track and waited for one of the cars to make its way down. I imagine the novelty of the experience wears off for those that take the cable car often from the top of hill down to work around Lambton Quay area but I feel like it'd be awesome to commute via cable car on a daily basis.

Unfortunately we picked a time and day to make the trip that lined up with the time and day that a local high school had decided to take a French class on an outing so we were stuck in an enclosed space with about 30 teenage girls giggling and speaking in broken French. We were pretty glad to not have to listen to that racket any more when we hit the top.

At the top we wandered around the gardens for a bit, although I am not particularly interested in any form of Botany it's still nice to wander around nature for a bit when the weather is good. We weren't there particularly long before we decided we'd had enough of strolling amongst the trees and decided to head back towards town.

On the ride back down there were also quite a few people joining us so the car was quite loud but at least it was loud English, the girls earlier had given me a headache. There were hardly any seats free and the one Beckett was on was not particularly wide. At the start of our trip a small child (Beckett's least favourite form of human) sat right next to him and was half on his lap the entire trip. Half way through the trip, the kid re - adjusted and actually did end up on Beckett's lap which I found hilarious. I think he was somewhere between yelling at the top of his lungs and throwing the kid out of the window judging by his expression at the time.

When we did make it down to the bottom I figured we were on this side of town so might as well visit parliament. Beckett didn't seem too keen but I managed to talk him into it and we arrived just in time for one of their free guided tours. I hadn't had a tour of parliament since I was 14, when Helen Clarke was Prime Minister of New Zealand and we visited with my Social Studies class to watch question time.

Beckett seemed to gain interest as the tour went on and in the end I think we both enjoyed the experience quite a bit. As they take you around the various rooms and areas of parliament they talk a bit about how New Zealand politics works and where certain offices are, where foreign dignitaries are received and things of the like which fascinates me.

After the tour, it was heading into late afternoon and the weather was still holding up so I decided that a nice way to cap off the day might be to go for a quick walk around the waterfront area. We walked pretty much end to end along the wharf area, starting down near the events centre end. Personally I think the waterfront area is the most beautiful spot in the whole city so I wasn't going to pass up the chance to show that off.

We spent a beautiful Wellington day exploring some of the most Wellington - esque Wellington things you can do on a fine day. In hindsight I can't think of a better way to have spent the day.

In the next post here I'll cover the last day we had in Wellington and what we got up to during that, including how I justified skipping out on one of the most iconic visitor spots in the city.

Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash

Home Again

For the first time all trip, we had no real time restraints on us. The goal was to be in Wellington by the end of the day but whether that came at 4 in the afternoon or midnight was of no consequence. That being the case, we had the luxury of sleeping in and lazing around camp until we felt like moving on.

When we did eventually polish off our liquor, clear our rubbish out and pack the car again, we drove off in the direction of Huka Falls, approximately 5 minutes up the road from the camp.

The Huka Falls are a series of waterfalls that drain Lake Taupo, the largest lake in New Zealand by surface area (616 square km), into the longest river in the country, the Waikato (425 km). The Falls thunder an immense volume of water through a narrow canyon approximately 15 metres in width before the river opens out to around 100 metres wide. The water from the Huka Falls at times flows at a volume of 220,000 litres per second which some loose internet pseudo research tells me would fill an Olympic swimming pool in 11 seconds. 

We arrived at the viewing area and ran into a German guy we'd met briefly at the camp ground who had apparently hitched a ride there for a look around. After a quick chat with him we wandered around and watched the foaming white water coming down from the falls and rampaging down under the bridge we were standing on.

Being a North Islander (albeit from the very south of the north) who has had his fair share of cross country road trips, I had visited the falls several times prior, the first time as a very small child. I always seem to end up on the same train of thought with the tremendous sight of the water rushing through and the overpowering sound of it in my ears. 

I always wonder first what it must have been like for the first Maori people coming down the Waikato in their waka to come across this spectacle. I wonder if the first people to come across it recognised the power of it as insurmountable or if there were attempts made to traverse it. Even the first British settlers must have been astonished by it as they floated their way down the Waikato, exploring the land. I'd hate to think what that volume and speed of rapid could do to the most robust of vessels let alone an old - time wooden craft. I imagine it'd go from boat to splinters in the space of a minute or so.

I think Beckett was also pretty taken with the sheer power of the water and the beautiful colouring of it between the clear blue of the water and the bright white of the foam as it struck the rocks around it. It was definitely a spot I wasn't going to miss out on sharing with him, an iconic feature of New Zealand geography at the meeting point between the two water giants Taupo and Waikato. It really is little wonder that the Maori have such great spiritual connection to these places when you witness the profound dominance over humanity that they exhibit.

We spent a good half hour or so at the falls before hitting the road back towards Wellington. We split the driving between us which made the trip a lot easier to do without copious amounts of rest time along the way.

Apart from a few gas station food stops which as you all know are a staple of every road trip, the drive home went smoothly with nothing particularly notable occurring. We had some great music, courtesy if Beckett's i - phone blasting through the sound system, a reliable and easy to drive vehicle courtesy of my mother (cheers Mum) and a fantastic set of scenery along the drive courtesy of New Zealand.

We arrived back at my place not too late into the evening, unpacked the car as much as we could be bothered and settled in for the night. We had 2 days at or disposal for me to finish showing off Wellington and so I had the usual suspects scheduled (cable car, te papa,waterfront area, cuba street shopping, drinking on courtenay place) with the weather being the deciding factor in which ones we did at which time.

In the next post I'll talk about our last couple of days in Wellington and the remainder of our shenanigans before I eventually agreed to let Beckett go back to Wisconsin.

Photo by Matt Power on Unsplash

On the Road

As was beginning to become a theme for the trip we were up relatively early in the morning to pack up and hit the road out of Orewa. This time we had the luxury of not having to be up before the sun and it was about 8.30 AM before we were fed, packed and ready to go.

The goal for the day was to get to Taupo where there was a free camp ground I'd heard about. I'd had the thought that it would be fun to spend the day in Rotorua before ending up in Taupo to set the tent up before sunset so that was the loose plan going into the day.

On the road I had the thought of getting in touch with my grandparents in Tauranga to see if they were free for a catch up. I knew we didn't have time to stop off in Tauranga if we were going to do anything worthwhile in Rotorua but I thought if they were free they might like to meet us there as a good halfway point considering it's not often I get the opportunity to see them.

They got back and said they'd love to catch up so we co - ordinated to meet them for lunch in Rotorua. With a little bit of directing over the phone and the good luck the orienteering gods blessed us with our entire trip, we found our way to our meeting point; the Rotorua Pizza Hutt.

It was awesome catching up with Grandma and Grandad, and we had a pretty good feed for lunch taking advantage of an "All You Can Eat" type deal. Even with our relatively hectic schedule spurred on by Beckett's late arrival and needing to be back in Wellington in time to fly home, we managed to get an hour or so of catch up time before heading off which was nice.

Our next stop from there was to the Rotorua Luge by way of their gondolas up to the track. We each bought five rides and we started out on the intermediate level track. With neither of us having much regard for our personal safety we had some great races and terrific near misses down that track before deciding to upgrade to the advanced route.

Along the advanced track I lost count of how many times I skidded round corners with only one wheel touching the ground or almost rolled out entirely. Beckett's trouble with the turning mechanism almost sent him head into a head - on collision with one of the track dividers until he managed to make an extremely sharp turn at the absolute last second to avoid it. We had a lot of fun.

I found it funny to see how fast Beckett hurtled down the tracks without fear but almost shook with anxiety on the chairlift back to the top.

After a good day of luging and the obligatory sniff around the jelly bean shop at the top, we went back towards Rotorua to have a look at the hot pools because leaving those out would have been an unforgivable sin as a local playing host to a foreigner. 

We had a quick walk around a park in town that has a few thermal mud pools around it and dipped our toes in the naturally heated pools they have set up around the place for that purpose before calling it a day and venturing off towards our accommodation for the night.

Again, we were blessed in our ability to find our camp site just outside of Taupo, largely helped by pre - printed directions from google maps. We arrived in good time, beating out the setting sun by at least a couple of hours which was nice. We set up the tent when we got there and decided to drive into Taupo for dinner.

At Taupo, we ate and had a brief scout around of the area, including a quick look at the lake area. There wasn't really anything that I could think of that we absolutely had to do in Taupo itself so we decided that the next day we'd continue on our journey towards Wellington. I did, however, feel obligated to take Beckett by the Huka falls to check out the sheer force of nature on display there, so we planned that stop for the next morning.

To cap off an action - packed day, we set up the camping chairs we'd borrowed from mum outside our tent, and relaxed in those with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a large bottle of coke to mix. I've definitely had worse days.

My next post here will briefly touch on our visit to the Huka falls and the rest of our commute down to Wellington which went off without too much trouble.

Photo by Jake Blucker on Unsplash

Out of Auckland

Once again we were up before the sun to beat traffic out of Papakura into Auckland but this time we had to get ourselves around so lacked the luxury of being able to sleep through the car trip. I decided that it would be fun to briefly go North of Auckland and if the weather was god perhaps find a nice beach.

When we arrived in Central Auckland we found a place to park up and slept for a couple of hours while we waited for places to open. Beckett needed to get some more NZ cash and we both needed a quick breakfast.

After stopping by a money exchange and my favourite coffee shop in all of Auckland for food (The Strand Arcade Cafe off lower Queen Street) we hit the road and headed up towards Warkworth since I knew how to get there and figured it was close to some nice beaches if we still wanted to do that with our day.

We found our way up to Warkworth and after walking around for a bit, stopped for lunch at Pizza Co (which I recommend to anyone ever passing by Warkworth area) to plan out the day. We were both still relatively tired and neither of us was particularly keen on swimming or anything so we decided in the end to give the beach a miss.

Over lunch I had the thought to get in touch with my step - mother who lives in Wellsford, only a 20 minute drive from where we were to see if she was free for us to visit and see my little brother. She got back to us pretty quick and said she'd love for us to stop by so we decided that would be a fun thing to do. We were booked in that night at a campground in Orewa so our timing worked out for us to spend a few hours in Wellsford and then head over there for the evening.

When we got to Wellsford, Tania (step-mum) suggested we bail Levi out of kindy a couple of hours early and get some decent hang time with him. He was absolutely stoked to see me, something that doesn't happen to often with us living so far apart from each other. I got to have a look around his school and see some of the stuff he'd made there which he was pretty proud to show me.

We took him down to the park near the library and had a run around with him that wore us out more than him. Being a typical 5 year old kid, he kept going at about 100 miles an hour the whole time we were with him. He showed us around the library a little bit and took me to where all of the childrens books are which was pretty cool.

Tania invited us around for an early dinner after Levi sufficiently tuckered us all out and I figured it'd be cool to maximise our time there so we accepted. I sat and read books with Levi on the couch until dinner was ready and he picked out his favourite ones for me. It was awesome being able to spend some quality time with the kid.

After dinner, it was time for us to get back on the road and head out to our accommodation at Red Beach, Orewa. It was a relatively good day weather - wise so we had no problems on the road and generally made good time.

When we were all set up with the tent pitched on our site, we went for a quick drive down to the beach which was about a 5 minute drive from the campground. We had arrived around 6.30 PM so we still had a couple of daylight hours to enjoy the beach before sundown. We took a couple of beers and a rugby ball with us and enjoyed the last bit of our day in good old fashioned kiwi style, which capped it all off perfectly.

As the sun began to drop and the heat consequently began to back off with it, we settled back at the campground, ate some of the food we'd been given by Aida (leftover meat and salads from a barbecue we had the night before) and knocked back a couple more beers (for the record, we were drinking Speight's; the best New Zealand has to offer) and hit the hay in preparation for the next leg of our trip, cruising from Orewa down to Taupo.

In the next post I will be covering our journey to the free campsite just outside of Taupo and what we got up to when we were down there.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash