Wellington - Te Papa and the city

Once again we have had fine weather for our visit. It only rained once today when we were in the car...the rest of the time it has been fine. We took the cable car to the top of the hill and had a look at the cablecar museum and got a few photos of the city... Then we had a nice lunch at Cafe L'affare and went to Te Papa, the national museum. We caught the end of the Lord of the Rings exhibit (hurry, only on until August 20) which was very interesting but so full that we decided we were too tired to see the rest of the museum and have been home storing up our energy for packing and the return trip home tomorrow.

Napier - Art Deco city

Napier is a city that was destroyed by earthquake in 1931 and then completely rebuilt with concrete Art Deco style buildings. The other thing I found remarkable about the city is that they buried all their service ducts like electricity and telephone and said that they would have their sinage and lighting on columns in the centre of the street rather than on poles on the footpath. The whole city has a very clean and well looked after appearance and the buildings are just a delight. Everything is so well looked after and the locals really seem to love their town. We are staying at the apARTments in the centre of town and from here it is possible to look out of our balcony onto the mall (it feels very like being in the Richardsons Arcade in Armidale). We had a breakfast at Heath and Saphos, lunch at the McDecco McDonalds and dinner at Provedore. All the food so far has been considerably less fussy than I remember when we had our trip to South Island which may mean that there are two distinct styles of cuisine in NZ. Hopefully when we come back next time the broadband situation will be resolved as paying $10/hr for telecom wireless is not an option and dialup is no longer an option in the civilised universe.

Matariki performance

There's a Maori dinner/dance at the Novotel called 'Matariki' which just so happens to be the name of the season we find ourselves in at the moment. This is the time when the Peliades comes up in the sky and it's the Maori new year (there are posters for it all over the place in Auckland and on the way here). Anyway, it wasn't as toe curling as I expected. The buffet (our second of the day after visiting Hamilton's Sky City for Sunday lunch) was delicious with the expected baked meat like roast pork, lamb and chicken. There was also kumera and some hoki and trout as well as a lot of salads that I didn't try.


The guys did a Haka, the women did a poi dance or three and they got a bit of audience participation from a predominantly foreign audience (Korean, Japanese, US and UK). There were many more people there than I thought as well so I am glad we went.

Goodbye Auckland...Hello Rotorua

Took a drive down the expressway from Auckland to Rotorua...that's expressway 1 FYI. Very good road and the car handled well. Looks like everyone was going back the other way and as tomorrow is Monday I suppose they were all on holiday for the weekend down this way. We have had a look through some smelly mud pools (acidic) and some smelly clear water pools (alakali). Tonight we are going ot a Hungi and a dancing/haka show. Should be toe curling but I suppose it has to be done.

Chris at Cradle Mountain Lodge

Chris @ Cradle Mountain 

Google

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mozdev.org - googlebar: index

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Me 

First day

Had dinner with Colm and Jon (Jon's birthday on Aug 6).