To the North Island!

Now that I’m back home, I finally have time to catch up on the last blog posts from our New Zealand trip.  Sorry for the delayed posting!

After arriving in Picton, we stayed the night and then were leaving the South Island via the Interislander ferry the next morning.  The ferry runs between Picton and Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand.  It was a cloudy and rainy day, so we were happy to sit inside for the three hour ferry ride.  Once we arrived in Wellington Harbour, the ferry had to wait for a few minutes because there was actually a Southern Right whale that had been living in the harbor for the last few days.  We watched the whale in front of the ferry until it swam away and we were able to go in to the marina.

On the ferry

Once in Wellington, we checked into our hotel, where we were in a townhouse-style apartment with three floors- Lindsey and I even got our own rooms!  The main thing on my checklist to see in Wellington was Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand.  So, we walked over in the rain and wind and got pretty soaked on the way over.  We had about three hours until the museum was closing and I wanted to see as much as possible, so we started at the top floor and worked our way back down.

The top floor was mainly art exhibits, and I listened to a bit of the audio tour and learned about how a lot of the art was inspired by Maori culture.  A lot of the art was very colorful, which I enjoyed.  Then, we headed down to the next floor that had exhibits about the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori culture.  There were lots of artifacts, videos, and even buildings to show different aspects of Maori life, which was really interesting.  The next floor had an exhibit about how the landscape of New Zealand has changed since the Maori arrived and then since Europeans arrived.  We ended the afternoon by going through the exhibit on the lowest floor that was about the Battle of Gallipoli.   Unc was excited about this exhibit so he had gone ahead of us and spent more time there.  Throughout the exhibit, there were huge lifelike statues with scenes from the battle.  They were really incredible to look at since they were so realistic, but on about twice as big a scale.

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After the museum closed, we left and went for dinner nearby.  That night we had a relaxing night so we could get up early the next day and begin our adventures on the North Island.