New Zealand

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Kate and I had been to New Zealand back in 2004 when we explored the North Island on our way through to Australia. We returned to explore the South Island when Kate was invited to present at a conference in Wellington. Wellington is the capital city on the extreme south/east corner of the North Island.

Our flight from Melbourne was uneventful ... until we got to Wellington. It was quite a windy landing with the plane rocking back and forth for a rough cross wind landing. Kids on the plane were laughing and shrieking joyfully through it all. Kate and I were gripping one another and praying that it wasn't our last flight ever. When we landed the pilot said, "Welcome to windy Wellington. The control tower didn't think we were going to make it."  They taxied to a second gate where the wind wasn't rocking the plane around.

The weather remained windy and cool throughout our visit. Late March in this part of the world is the beginning of the fall season. And this is an island nation where weather is largely influenced by the cool seas which surround it.

In Wellington we stayed at the Museum Hotel (right across the street from the new museum where it had originally stood). The hotel had been moved on rails to it's new location! I tramped around Wellington and the harbor area, visited the Te Papa Museum, took a funicular/cable car up the hillside to visit the Botanical Gardens and toured the parliament while Kate was busy with her conference and meeting with people. Interestingly the parliament was a bicameral house but the senate has been abolished -- it's a small country, they don't need a large parliament.

After the conference we took a ferry from Wellington to the South Island landing in Picton (that's the Marlborough wine region). From Picton we then took a small narrow gauge train to Christchurch. The train had an open air viewing carriage and there were lots of views of vineyards and the eastern coast as we traveled south to Christchurch.

We didn't explore Christchurch at all. We rented a car and headed out to first explore some nearby wineries and the Hanmer Hot Springs where we had a bit of a soak.

From there we drove west from Christchurch into the mountains and stayed at Lake Tekapo where the Mt John Observatory is found. We went to the observatory one night and got to see the rings of Saturn from a modest sized reflector telescope. The moon was bright that night and there was some cloud which made star gazing not as good as it might be.

The mountain country we explored is pretty barren. Although we did run into a herd of sheep -- not as many as on the north island but enough to block the road. We could have spent a lot more time exploring the island but this whole trip was a late addition to our planned stay in Australia.

We returned to Melbourne from Christchurch.