Wellington
I’m reanimating this blog because… I have a TON more New Zealand stories to share with you! And I wish I was traveling wide and carefree instead of hiding in my house, hoping everyone I know and the whole world stays safe and healthy. I always knew things could change in a flash; sometimes I even think that the past couple of years have been gearing me up for a time like this. Am I the only one? Does expecting societal collapse make me a doomsdayer?
Don’t answer that. Let’s go to Wellington.
…
So to catch you up to speed, Kate and I were continuing on our round trip of New Zealand. This was late November 2018, for some time perspective. The last stop I told you about was Taupo, so next we headed southward to the windy capital of kiwiland.
We got there via Rt. 1. There’s a section of this road that’s simply unreal. I am afraid any description of it is going to pale compared to the real thing. It’s called Desert Road because it crosses through the Rangipo Desert, a really barren stretch of land with nothing growing aside from short grasses and stark mountains. To paint a clearer picture for my fellow nerds, this was near where they filmed Mordor, the most desolate and gloomy location in all of The Lord of the Rings. We had much better luck than Frodo and Sam, though – our experience of Mordor was backdropped by blue skies and big puffy clouds. I guess the tall electric towers made it a little more ominous with the post-apocalyptic, “there are signs of civilization but you are in the middle of a desert and might be the last people in existence” vibes.
We’d met a British accountant at our Taupo hostel who needed a lift to his accommodation in Wellington, so instead of going straight to the AirBnb we had booked, we pulled into Wellington city first to drop him off. We didn’t mind the extra trek because we were excited to see the city, anyway, after hearing so much about it! (Wellington’s quality of life ratings are really high. Check all the lists. It’s way up there.)
Upper Hutt
We took a really quick walk around downtown Welly, but we were tired after our long drive, so it wasn’t long before we were heading back out of the city and looping all around the bay to get to Upper Hutt, where we’d rented an AirBnb. We were so grateful to have a room to ourselves after staying in hostels all month (and yet this was just the beginning). Just a half hour drive out of the city and we were in a lovely neighborhood with wild rainforest sandwiched in between houses perched on hillsides. There was something distinctly tropical about Upper Hutt, and I found it to be really energizing and peaceful. Maybe that’s just because it rained a bunch while we stayed there.
It wasn’t all cozy comfort and safety, though. This might have been the tiredness talking, but I also felt an edge of danger. You had to be very alert while steering a car, for instance. To get deeper into Upper Hutt, the road follows the natural boundary of the bay, so it’s full of twisty curves and turns. If you drive slightly off the road, you’d fall into the bay. Some places have a little barrier of a pebbly beach, but in many spots the waves break right below the road. Even our parking location had that element of risk. We had to park out on the street since our hosts' and their 3 neighbors all shared the same driveway (a pretty common thing in NZ) – it was not a problem at all, but there was no shoulder on those roads! If you misjudged your car’s perimeter by a centimeter, you’d fall into the deepest drainwater ditch I’ve ever seen. The area was beautiful, though.
The house itself was a pretty steep climb up the driveway and then up a couple flights of winding stairs. The house was so comfortable! And we got a whole bedroom to ourselves! Flopping onto a bed instead of climbing into a bunk felt like real luxury and it was such a nice break from dorms. All that uphill climbing was worth it, by the way: this was our view of the bay right out our windows.
Return to Wellington
Our return trip to Wellington CBD was so easy and stressless thanks to our kind host, who had the inside scoop since he worked at the marina on Oriental Parade, the main street along the bay. He told us where we could park close to all the action for free! Score.
Street Art
So the thing that was immediately appealing about Wellington was the sense of humor infesting the streets. Weird random art, quirky puns and jokes everywhere. This is a very premature, surface-level read because this was my first time there, but downtown Wellington felt like art school turned into a city in the best way. None of the nihilism with all the creative expression. Lots of hidden gems to put a smile on your face if you take a second to look for them.
Waterfront
It’s a city really influenced by water. It’s way out on the end of a peninsula so it’s surrounded by bays. The harbor front is a major attraction, even though it’s always windy there! Wellington has a reputation for being constantly rainy, but it gave us a radiant and sunny day for exploring! Thanks, Welly. You da best.
Cuba Street
Cuba Street is the main hub for all the shopping and tourism in the city. It’s quite fun but expensive. Great place for people-watching, though! Lots of fashion inspiration going on down that street. I didn’t take any pictures there, but I did take some pictures of the art we saw!
Weta Workshop
Weta is a massive prop-making and special effects studio for films. All the props and creatures used in The Lord of the Rings were made here, of course, but also Ghost in the Shell, Narnia, Avatar (with the blue people, not the far superior animated Last Airbender), The Last Samurai, Thor, Power Rangers…so many movies. One of the coolest places I’ve ever been. We signed up for the tour of the prop tour and it was fascinating to hear about the processes and iterations and design thought that goes into each piece of gear and every creature. You could kind of tell that for the people working there, it was like any other creative department in the world that was overstressed and overworked but also, at the end of the day, really rewarding. No photos were allowed there but I can just tell you: it was so impressive. We got to hold one of the iterations of Aragorn’s sword! Also, it was really fun to see recognizable things in real life: the armor from Sauron’s severed hand, Gollum, the mountain trolls.
Fun fact, the studio is named after the Weta, a gigantic insect that’s famous in New Zealand.
Um, also, very important: thank goodness for cats. There were days when the cats single-handedly made NZ feel like a second home on the road because they were so friendly and welcoming. So the first picture in the gallery below is the first of many friendly cats we met. He ran up to us and flopped on the walkway, and we couldn’t say no to that! We stopped and pet him for a while before he returned to his hiding spot in the grass. He was a very cool cat.
Te Papa Museum
The Te Papa is amazing. It’s four floors packed full of information about NZ animals, geology, and weather patterns, Maori culture and colonization history, and modern art. It’s almost too much to take in in one day. Which is fine, because you can go back as often as you want – it’s free! When we were there, there was a sobering, impactful temporary exhibit about New Zealand’s involvement in WWI at Gallipoli. There were these insane models that were built to be exactly 2.4 times larger than life-size, and they took Weta Workshop 24,000 hours to create all eight of them. The level of detail and reality they were able to capture with each one was incredible. The whole exhibit was really moving and put you in the shoes of the people living through that time. Really made me sadder than ever that war is such a hallmark of human history.
Globes outside the museum.
Wellington Cable Car
Afterwards we walked through town a bit more and took the cable car up to the botanical gardens. It was a little anticlimactic. $7 for a ride that lasted maybe 5 minutes? But it was 5 minutes of a really steep incline – so that at least tells you something about the elevation changes in Wellington city. At the top was another world!
View from the cable car platform at Kelburn
Botanical Gardens
The gardens are soo cool. An endless maze of meandering paths up and down hills, through forests and different biomes. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, rain was threatening so we turned back before we’d had time to explore that much.
That’s it for Wellington city, for now! With the next post, we’ll keep the Fellowship of the Ring party going and venture out to Rivendell!