Australia and New Zealand, 2024

Australia and New Zealand, 2024

February 28^th - Wellington, New Zealand

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We woke up docked in Wellington this morning where busy morning traffic (0:51) ran through the city. It was a cloudy day, with a light rain falling. so first we settled into breakfast.

Mei-O and I were off today on a tour I booked from Viator, the "From Cave to Coast Wellington Highlights Tour". Due to some misinformation I got from the staff at the ship's shore excursion desk, we left the ship early to catch a shuttle downtown to join our tour at a specific pick-up point^note.

After joining up with our tour, we began driving away from the port, climbing up a hill overlooking the sea until we stopped and got out at the very chilly and windy , a great vantage point to see Wellington below. Looking to the south, you could clearly see the Wellington Airport. It was a great view from up there, but the cool temperature and the strong wind kept us from staying too long.

It was a little after 11:00 when we started back down, delayed slightly at a construction zone (we eventually got the go ahead), finally arriving at the Chocolate Fish where we were going to have lunch.

The restaurant was already pretty busy when we got there, but this was a good deal! We could order anything from their menu which offered a lot of choices. Our group sat all together in a nice setting (a couple of sisters were missing from the chairs up front here). Wanting to try their "specialty", I ordered the "Westcoast Whitebait Fritter" (fish smothered in egg on toast. It was good - it looks good, doesn't it? But the fish was really skinny). Mei-O ordered the safer option "Seafood Chowder with Toast" (which was also good, but there wasn't much of it) and we shared a little of each other's meal. As we came out of the restaurant, a bicycle club was passing by. I don't know if they opted for lunch there or not.

As I mentioned earlier, our tour was called the "From Cave to Coast Wellington Highlights Tour". We now figured we were off to visit some caves somewhere, probably the Weta cave (from Viator's description on their webpage) along the coast. How wrong we were! We were going to visit the Cave. A fascinating thing we didn't know about Wellington is that it's the home of the Wētā Workshop, "an award-winning film effects company that services the world’s creative industries. Our crew have worked on many well-known and much-loved films and TV series, such as The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar, King Kong, District 9 and many more....We sell a lot of what we make, and in our Wētā Caves, you can purchase all sorts of props, merchandise, collectibles and more." (from their website). And they weren't kidding! (There were several other tours where you could actually go into the studios where the actual production was done, but those are more for lovers of the action/fantasy genre of movies like those mentioned above.)

On the way back to town, we drove along the coast and saw a lot of rugged coastline (0:15) where waves pounded upon the rocky shore. Our tour guide is talking about house prices, about the cost of houses along the coast with a good view ("...1.2, 1.4 million..."), but he also talked about surfing and about some legends built around the rocks and rough seas here, but to be honest, I wasn't paying too much attention. I should've been, especially since this was the "coast" part of our "From Cave to Coast Wellington Highlights Tour", but at least I was enjoying the coastline scenery as we drove past.

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