North Island (Final Part)

So, where were we? ... in New Zealand, Lake Taupo...

We left Lake Taupo, fresh from our newfound freefalling skills, setting off with a tank full of petrol. This is an important point as there are very sparsely spread out across NZ, sometimes up to a 100 kms apart. So, Alex and I have had some interesting end of tank driving situations, reducing our average speed, going into neutral on the downhills, and mainly hoping we'll make it to the next station as the LOW FUEL light starts to blink.

To get to Wellington there are several routes, the scenic one was the one we chose. Via Napier. About 100km extra but we wanted to see the famous Art Deco style town. Napier was rebuilt in that remarkable style after a huge earthquake in the 20s.

Some of the more prominent Art Deco Style buildings...


The earthquake also raised a whole area of land around the town which was previously under sea level to a couple meters above. This is were some of the fine local vineyards are now located.



After a huge fush and chups lunch, at the 3rd best chippy in NZ, we set off towards Wellington. There are some interesting town names on the way such as Dannevirke and Norsewood. These are after some Scandinavian lumberjacks brought in to cut a way for a railroad in the dense rainforest between Napier and Wellington. There isn't much of that forest left.

In fact, there's only about 25% of the original native forests left. 50% were cut down by the Mauris, who'd arrived around the 14th century (will need to check that fact). The rest of the deforestation was performed by the Europeans to create feeding grounds for the now famous cattle and sheep. This is some of what we learned at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, a free-entrance museum which tries to convey the essence of NZ culture and history.

Other things I did in Wellington include paying for my registration fee, a whopping 700 NZ$.

We stayed a couple of nights in Wellington, where we regrouped, had a nice steak, checked out Cuba st with its coffee shops, had a few beers and started planning our South Island trip. We booked a ferry to Picton on the South Island, across the Cook Straight, for early the next morning. I made the booking for the wrong leg (inbound instead of outbound journey) but it turns out it didn't matter much...