January 20-22 2023
"Well, it's windy. But it's actually a lovely place, where you're pretty much surrounded by water and the bay. The city itself is quite small, but the surrounding areas are very reminiscent of the hills up in northern California, like Marin County near San Francisco and the Bay Area climate and some of the architecture. Kind of a cross between that and Hawaii.”
- Peter Jackson
Some scenes from our days in Wellington -
A consistent feature of traveling is discovering things are not what you expected. Due to looking at media about a destination you begin to form a opinion about what you will find, only to discover it is not that way at all.
So it is with Wellington. This city is the capital of the country and the home of a University. It enjoys a temperate marine climate year round. A number of cultural events occur here and it in now the home of a major film industry. The last Avatar film was completed here.
However, I imagined it would be similar to Aukland, a sleek sophisticated metropolis with gleaming modern buildings and upscale condominiums. While their is some of that here, in the area we are staying, downtown central business district, the architecture is considerably more banal. Part of the reason may lay in the events of a Monday night in 2016.
Just after midnight on November 14th, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the area. 65% of the downtown buildings were damaged, and the docks near where we are staying where closed for weeks.
So many of the buildings surrounding us are only 10-15 years old. There is some Edwardian and Victorian architecture to be found, but, in the area we are at, it is pushed out by commonplace office buildings.
Here are a few of the more interesting buildings we passed. I am sure there are more, we just didn’t see them.
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What is right beside us is Cuba Street. Guidebooks describe this street as “Artistic mecca”, “Quirky”, and “An eclectic mix of cafes and vintage stores”. In reality it is the “Haight-Ashbury” district of the city. It feels like an aging hippie and counterculture neighborhood the Gen Z young people are “Discovering” for the first time. It looks and feels like San Francisco - but in the 1970’s. It is a fun street filled with kitschy stores and pubs.
This is the commonly photographed Bucket Fountain built in the 60’s.
We had breakfast in a local cafe there. A pleasant looking, well dressed, balding, heavy set man in his 60’s started up a conversation with us. Kiwi’s are nothing if not very friendly.
“I see you’re American”, he remarked in that lovely Kiwi accent.
“Is it that obvious?”, I said.
”Un huh, you accent is very noticeable”
Feeling a little self conscious I replied, “We get that a lot”. That is the truth. We have been tagged several times with this accusation. I never paid attention to my accent, but to others in the world I guess its very distinctive.
“Are you Episcopalian?”, he asked.
Thinking this question was a little odd I replied, “No, but I know some.”
“Well tell them you met ‘The One’. I am called ‘Blessed’ by them.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I traveled on a spiritual quest to Mount Sinai and there Moses appeared to me.”
-Long pause -
“Ok.”
He went on to explain that we are completing a cosmic cycle of 13.9 billion years and everything is about to change.”
I really, really wanted to dive in further with this charming fellow, he was so friendly, but the better part of me said I should not. Colleen recognized my temptation and said, “We need to get going. ”
We exchanged pleasantries and left. He was so nice! We can now say we met “The One”. Curiously, he looked nothing like Keanu Reeves.
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We made our way to the Te Papa museum. This is the National Museum of New Zealand. It is right on the harbor front and affords a good view looking back on the city. Wellington is very hilly. Buildings and homes cling precariously to the side of hills surrounding the bay. This seems a curious arrangement considering the area is prone to earthquakes. Who am I to say anything? In America we routinely build housing in areas prone to hurricanes, flooding, wildfires and more. The population here is considerably smaller than Aukland at around 300,000. Due to the lack of a lot of open space, buildings are densely packed together.
Everything is centered around the harbor which is often very breezy. Wellington’s nickname is “The Windy City”. So it was when we visited the museum. Getting inside was a welcome relief from the wind gusts outside. Te Papa, which means’ Our Place’, is a large, modern, beautiful building that dominates the harbor landscape. There are many rotating exhibits that range form Maori history to natural history. There was a new exhibit featuring the story of the battle of Gallipoli peninsula that was receiving great praise.
For those that do not know, Gallipoli was a series of devastating battles during World War I. The British and a significant number of New Zealanders were attempting to take a peninsula out side of Istanbul from the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany during the first World War. It was a brutal battle of attrition which the allies ultimately lost. Over 44,000 allies died including over 2700 Kiwis. For this country, it looms as the greatest military disasters it ever endured.
The museum takes you inside the campaign with an immersive exhibit featuring letters, weapons, maps, and audiovisual displays. What is most compelling are a series of huge statues (2.4 x human size) recreating important characters from the battle. These impressive works of art are highly detailed and made over at the WETA workshop.
It was a moving and sobering display. One could not help but think of the current conflict in Ukraine as you toured the exhibit.
Of note, the entire disaster was the brainchild of one Winston Churchill.
This ‘playhouse’ above is actually a scale model of a Blue Whale's heart. It is actually that big!
Another interesting bit was the largest intact specimen of a Giant Squid. on display here This was an immature female that measured 4.5 meters long. It’s eyes are the size of a soccer balls making them the largest in all animals and useful for seeing the the dark depths where it lives. It is very rare to even see a specimen of this reclusive animal.
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Zealandia is a much heralded park in the hills above downtown. It was an old water reservoir that after it was abandoned was converted into a huge open air bird sanctuary. They surrounded it with a predator fence to protect the population. The fence keeps out domestic cats, dogs, , possums, and Marjorie Taylor Greene - known as ‘Vile Margies’ by the locals here.
In 2017 they did a survey of the estimated bird population of the park. Between 200-300,000 birds call the park home including 28 unique species to New Zealand. We were excited to see birds of rare plumage and beauty.
We saw only 6 birds during the entire two hour walk.
The rest were wherever birds go to hang out during the day. You could hear birdsong, but they remained unobserved.
What we did see -
And this guy -- As far as I know this is not a bird. This is a Tuatara lizard that is referred to as a 'living fossil'. It has not changed in over 70 million years.
It also has not moved since that time. It is very very still. Not sure if it is real or not.
We had a vain hope to see Kiwi’s, the national bird, here. They are nocturnal and flightless. They live in little burrows in the hillside and feed on insects in the dark.
Above is an area where they nest. According to Maori legend bugs were ravaging the island. Kiwi’s, in a act of selfless nobility agreed to give up their wings and eat the bugs so that others may fly. It is because of this they are venerated. They are easy prey for cats and dogs and were virtually wiped out before being moved to protected areas.
Despite the enormous yet remarkably shy bird population all was not a disappointment. It was a lovely hike through sun-dappled trails that ran beside brooks. In the cool , verdant undergrowth was a wonderland of exotic plants worthy of a chapter in a Tolkien novel.
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After several miles of walking around the city we will spend today resting and doing laundry.
Tomorrow we board the Ferry for the passage to the South Island.
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