We visit the wildlife sanctuary in Wellington

Here is an other supplement to our trip to New Zealand

From Kelburn, we went for a walk through the suburbs to a wildlife sanctuary. We stopped to get a photo with the hills behind us. Wellington certainly has lots of hills.

At the wildlife sanctuary we saw lots of birds that only live in New Zealand. We also finally saw a Tuatara. Tuataras look like lizards, but they are from a much older family that is a remnant of the dinosaurs. He was a big fellow, about 30 centimetres long. Certainly big enough to gobble up small backpackers, so we didn't want to get too close. The name "Tuatara" means "Peaks on the back" in the Maori language. If you look closely, you can see the peaks on the back of this tuatara.

Somewhere, we have photos of us with some baby tuataras that are much more our size, but that camera is still packed in a box with our host family's luggage.

We ride on the Wellington Cable Car

Here is a supplement to our trip to New Zealand

This is as the car leaves the station and goes through a tunnel.

The cable car connects the town centre of Wellington, which is at sea level, with the suburb of Kelburn and the city's Botanical Gardens, which is on a hilltop overlooking the city. Here we are approaching the top. It was a short, but fun ride.

At the top, they have a museum telling the history of the cable car. It has an old car that kids can have their photo taken on, but we found one more our size.

We cross the Cook Strait

Our host family is going on holidays to the South Island of New Zealand and we are going too!

Here we are at the ferry terminal in Wellington with our back packs on, ready to board the ship.

This is our ship!

It is a rainy, windy day and the sea is looking a bit rough...

Bye, Wellington. We will see you in a few weeks.

We have a picnic on the beach

  It is the middle if summer in New Zealand, and it was a perfect day to eat an evening meal at the beach.

 This is Oriental Bay on Wellington Harbour. The sand here is golden, but that's a bit misleading because we heard that they import the sand to this beach. Sand on other parts of Wellington Harbour is either pebbles, or dark grey sand.

Cherries and other stone fruits are in season here, and so delicious.

We visit Te Papa

 

Our family took us to Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum.  

There were some enormous troll sculptures from "The Hobbit", they looked so scary!

At Te Papa we also saw a huge gingerbread house. Much too big for us. We preferred the gingerbread house we shared at Christmas time.

The kids in our family told us that their favourite exhibit in the whole museum is this colossal squid. It was found in Antarctic waters, and it is the only colossal squid on display in any museum in the world. It's eyeballs are the size of soccer balls. We are really glad that it is under glass.

We visit the Wellington Airport

Wellington airport is an international airport, but small and very relaxed!

 Weta Workshops created and installed an enormous Gollum at Wellington Airport for the world premiere of The Hobbit. It's huge and a bit creepy and wonderful. We're glad he has a fish to catch, and won't be interested in tiny backpackers like us!

We went for picking berries...

Today we went picking berries from a local orchard.

This is a local tradition in Napier, where there are lots of orchards with gorgeous summer fruits, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, plums, peaches and nectarines.

Here we are in the trays that the pickers use.

"Hans, where are you?"

These berries are so good, we couldn't help ourselves, we had to dive in to the bowl.
Some in the bowl, some in our mouths. Yum!

"Paul, stop eating them all and come and help me!"

We are in the middle of Middle Earth

Wellington is such an exciting place to be right now. A few weeks ago we saw the red carpet roll out for the world premiere of The Hobbit; An Unexpected Journey, and our family took us to see the movie! The Hobbit film was made in a studio in Wellington, and much of the footage was shot in New Zealand.

 

This is the Embassy, the cinema where the wold premiere was held. There is an enormous Gandalf and hobbit hole on the front of the building. Can you see Gandalf putting the magic mark on Bilbo's door?

 

We had our tickets ready. We couldn't wait to see the movie!

 

Look who we met at the cinema - Bilbo Baggins! 

Of course, all good movies need popcorn.

We loved the movie, some parts of it were very scary, and it was all exciting. We won't spoil the ending for you, but we think you should go and see it, it was fantastic.

We have visited the Wellington Christmas Tree

In a park by the water in Wellington there is a large display of lights in the shape of a Christmas tree. Our family took us to see it.

The lights change colours and make different patterns all the time. 

The city council provides bean bags and blankets so that people can lie warmly underneath the lights tree and watch the colours change. We were there quite late at night and the bean bags were full of people enjoying the view and the atmosphere.

In the same park were some special telephone boxes. We saw that they were specially set up so that we could talk to Santa! We told him that we have been very good backpackers this year, and he said that we were already on his "nice" list. 

It is strange to us to be getting ready for Christmas in the middle of summer instead of the middle of winter. It's just as much fun, but with much less snow than we are used to.

We go to Scouts

The children in our host family all go to scouts, Keas (named for an alpine parrot native to New Zealand) is for children 6 to 8 years old, Cubs is for children 8 to 11 years old, and Scouts for children 11 to 14. Scouting is very popular in New Zealand.


The Scout Den that we visited is located at the top of the Wellington Botanical Gardens. It is a small hut built about a hundred years ago. 

From the Scout Den the view over the city and harbour is breathtaking.  On a windy day we would really have to hang on, but today it was gorgeous and clear and still.  Perfect!

We go to school with one of our hostkids

The children at the local school have been following our adventures on this blog, and when we came to visit the classroom, the children wanted to play with us and show us around. 

We didn't do any lessons, just played around.  In New Zealand, December is the end of the school year and the children are just about to start their 6 week long summer holiday, so there are lots of activities and parties at school.  The weather is getting nice and warm, and everyone is looking forward to Christmas.

We are going to the cafe

We went shopping with our family in the centre of the city in Wellington.  One of the best shopping streets is Cuba Street (named for one of the early settler ships).  It is a pedestrian mall, and in good weather there are lots of people shopping and sitting at cafes enjoying good coffee and nice cake.

There is a really fun fountain in the Cuba Street mall called the Bucket Fountain.  Water runs into the buckets, and as they fill, they tip into the buckets below, until they tip into the buckets below that.  When the bottom buckets are full they tip and spill water everywhere, if shoppers aren't careful they get wet!  Can you see the water spilling right behind us?

Shopping makes everyone hungry, so we stopped at one of Wellington's many great cafes for a drink and a nibble. 

Yum!  We love cookies.  It is as well that small backpackers can eat a lot and not put on any weight at all.

Xmas baking

Our host family has a tradition of baking shortbread stars as Xmas gifts and to share at Xmas celebrations.  The baking looked like fun, so we offered to help.

First, we decided to help to roll the dough. It wasn't working very well.

Once we started working together in the same direction, things went much smoother.

Hans!  What are you doing in the sugar? 


It was time to start cutting out the stars. 

Paul used a fork to prick the top of each star, to help the sugar to stick better.  Yum!

Another batch is ready to go into the oven.  It's as well that we know how to bake these now, there will be lots more to make between now and Xmas!