From the Mountains to the Sky At 14 - 'Windy Welly'

This weekend, we flew to Wellington for a weekend in the city. Wellington is the capital of New Zealand but, like Ottawa, is not the biggest city. It is the third biggest behind Auckland and Christchurch.
Friday night, we flew from Christchurch to Wellington, arriving at 9:30. That evening we headed out into the city and visited a couple bars and such. We also wandered around the docks and saw some artwork and the New Zealand stock exchange.
Saturday morning, we went to Te Papa Museum, New Zealand's national museum like the British Museum in London. It was a great museum. There were tons of exhibits about New Zealand's history, geography, art, culture, nature and more. I could have spent the whole day there but there were lots of other things that we also wanted to do in the city. We left in the early afternoon to continue our tour of Wellington.

Next, we went up to the Botanical Gardens by Cable car. Despite it being winter, there were still a large number of flowers and plants in the gardens and since they were up on the hill, it provided a good viewpoint overlooking the city. There was a pleasant leisurely walk down from the Botanical Gardens to the government area which we took. It was all downhill and quite nice.

We got to the Beehive too late for the tours (security kicked us out immediately when we walked into the building), but still got to see the outside and the surrounding buildings. It was an interesting architectural thing to see.

Saturday evening, we went to the Karori Bird Sanctuary, an interesting project in the middle of the city. This is a place where an environmental group has removed all of the of the invasive predators brought by Europeans and put up a big fence to keep them from coming back in. The fence itself is quite a feat, including a close mesh (to keep animals from going through), a top shield (to keep animals from going over), and deep roots (to keep animals from burrowing under). We went to this reserve mainly to try to see the Kiwi. Unfortuanately, we didn't get to see a kiwi but we did hear them and saw some other animals including tuataras and kakas.

On Sunday morning, we climbed up Mt. Victoria beside Wellington. From the top, there were good views of Wellington harbour and the surrounding areas. 'M' and I had our flight home scheduled for 12:30 so we walked to the airport from Mt. Victoria. Along the way, it got really windy. And I mean really windy. When we got to the airport, we wandered along the coast and saw something quite amusing. Instead of the waves coming towards the shore, they were going away because the wind was so strong coming over the shore. Windy Welly certainly deserved its nickname here.



[I feel like this is not the most coherent post I've ever written, but I'm putting it up anyways. I would like to think that I'll come back and edit it later, but I probably won't]