Wellington, New Zealand

View of Wellington from the Botanical Gardens

I was told that I would love Wellington, and I did.  It did not disappoint.  I have a friend, Sam, that lives there and was fortunate to stay with him for a week while I just chilled out and played tourist on some days, a local on others.  I’ve been traveling for so long, it was nice to have a place that felt like home and a familiar friend to spend time with.  Wellington is one cool city filled with bars, lots of bars!  And some really good restaurants, lots of amazing music,  awesome views and hikes, beautiful botanical gardens, and of course, more Lord of the Rings stops…. well, the hub really.  The place where they do their film editing and make their props is located in Wellington, so if you’re into LOTR, you gotta drop by and take a look even if you don’t do the official tours around New Zealand. 

One great thing about New Zealand, is that they have AMAZING craft beers.  Sam works in a fantastic bar, called Hashigo Zake that is located in the basement level of a building and it feels so warm and intimate there, a perfect place to be to have a great beer on a rainy night, hang with a group of friends, or have a nice little date there.  Did I mention that they have some really good food?  Yeah, and Sam makes a lot of it.  We’re talking about awesome meat pies and such here.  The beer selection rotates based on seasonal offerings daily.  Yep, daily.  Cool thing is, you can even meet some of the brewers there as it really is the number one spot for craft beers in Wellington… ok, maybe in my opinion.  I was fortunate enough to be there during an event they were putting on with a brewery called Garage Project.  Garage Project is a cool, super tiny “nano” brewery that makes small batches of beer in a garage.  They keep it simple and quality.  They decided to make 24 beers in 24 weeks.  I got to try a few.  Hands down, stellar.  So if you’re ever in Wellington, you gotta go to Hashigo and you gotta try whatever those guys recommend.  The people who work there know their shit.  Most have a background in brewing so they’re not your typical backpacker bartender.  A must go to!

Another pretty awesome thing one can do in Wellington is go to the Botanical Gardens.  Bonus: it’s free.  You can take a nice little cable car ride up (not free) or walk up… or take a bus or hot air balloon or whatever up.  Point is, it’s pretty nice up there and you should go see it.  They feature different vegetation from all over New Zealand and the park is a perfect place to have some nice long walks and gawk at the gardens, or have a picnic, or go for an outdoor lunch at the café there.  I spent half the day just wandering around there. 

While I forgot which day of the week the farmers market is there on the wharf, it’s something worth going to.  Granted, I couldn’t exactly go buy a bunch of food to cook since I’m traveling, but you know how I love going to markets to check out the  local produce.  Plus, they have some really good food you can have for lunch for a decent price (New Zealand is not cheap, yo!).

One last awesome thing to do while in Wellington is going to the Museum of New Zealand.  Another bonus: free.  They have some great exhibits about the history of  life of New Zealand (obviously) along with exhibits on their animals, land, geothermal activity, and earthquakes.  This is earthquake country.  Wellington gets something like one earthquake a week.  As much as I am not a museum go-er, this is one I highly recommend.  It’s really interesting, interactive, informative, and fun.  Yes, fun!

Ok, this is random.  The things people do for their dogs...

From a walk up to the top of Oriental Parade

Recommend:

Hashigo Zake: 25 Taranaki Street, between Wakefield and Courtenay.  http://hashigozake.co.nz/ 

If you want some good food recommendations, talk to Sam at the bar.  Former chef and knows good food.  

Yeah, I'm kind of awesome with a shot gun

While some in my group went hiking over the Tongariro pass (a 7-hour hike with clamp-ons) many of us went to a town called Whakahoro (pronounced fuck-a-whore-o.  No, I'm not even joking.) that holds the Blue Duck Lodge.  The Blue Duck Lodge is a pretty special place.  It’s a working farm and is all about preserving the endangered Blue Ducks that naturally find their habitat on that property.  The farm has sheep and cows, along with natural boar, goats, deer and such… which are often shot because they are considered a pest in NZ.  While I may not 100% agree with going out and shooting animals for sport, they do make a tasty meal at the end of the day because I found out the food there is AMAZING!  In addition to their working farm, they also make the famous Manuka honey that is known for it’s own medicinal properties.  Some of the activities that we did there are 4-wheel driving, kayaking, clay pigeon shooting, and hiking.  I went on a lovely hour long hike with a few people through the Blue Duck property where we could witness cows being cows, sheep being sheep, ducks being crazy ducks, and just witness the gorgeous beauty that is the Blue Duck property.  We were fortunate enough to see a pair of blue Ducks as well which I hear is quite rare as they scare easily and there aren't very many of them. 

Now, since I was in NZ during the Olympics and was traveling with people from all over the world, we felt the need to have friendly little competitions.  While the Irish girls won in just about every drinking game, I was somehow able to represent America just how America is often be thought of – that everyone has a gun and uses it.  So we had a little friendly clay pigeon shooting competition and the majority of us had never done something like that before.  And frankly, I’m terrified of guns let alone holding them and shooting them, so this was my first time.  However, it seems that I have a bit of a knack for shooting a shotgun.  I was able to shoot 9 out of 11 clay pigeons  with the last one being done left-handed.  Not a bad day’s work for an Ameican.  And I quite enjoyed it.  

Boom!  In lots of bits and pieces.  (Those little things flying through the air)

The Irish gals.  Such a fun group of girls!  Wicked sense of humor!

The famous Blue Ducks

Some awesome driftwood art outside of Whakahoro and these are life-sized!

Kia Ora! And other overdue greetings from the land of the long white cloud...

I realize that a lot of my New Zealand travels are filled with a lot of little stops going from point A to point B, and not enough to really do a full blog on.  So I’d rather share it in it’s small bits and pieces with you... plus, I'm way behind on my posts.  Bear with me...

BRIDAL VEIL FALL

The silver fern of New Zealand (nearly national symbol and logo is decorated with their fern)

ROTTEN EGGS ROTORUA

While there briefly, we got the idea of how this town is so popular due to the Maori tribes located there along with the omnipresent geothermal mud pools… and it smells like steamy, rotten eggs.  Several of the girls went to Hells Gate where they soaked in the boiling mud baths there which are said to have medicinal properties.  Ok, I didn't go because frankly, I was being a cheapskate and didn't want to pay to go sit in something that smelled like rotten eggs.  Though I did go to some geothermal pools (with water only) that were free in a park in Taupo and I found it to be just as pleasant (and did I mention free?) in the freezing cold air... and rain.

Here are some pictures of the geothermal mud pools that can often been found around Rotorua.  Super cool to check these out live as the mud is sort of a grey-silvery liquefied mud just boiling away… 

TONGARIRO NATIONAL PARK

Another stop was at the Tongariro National Park that many people might recognize from the Lord of things films as Mt. Doom, except while we were there, it was covered in snow… so no lava… and no all-seeing eye, Modor sort of thing going on.  I found that while New Zealand is no doubt one gorgeous country and Lord of the Rings really helped put a lot of these gorgeous locations on the map for tourism, a lot was still done through movie magic… so while witnessing this beauty is one thing, I still wanted the movie magic version with all of it’s ambiance and exoticism and wild creatures…. of course – a realistic expectation.  Tongariro’s three mountains are spectacular!  My German friend, Sonja, and I went on a nice hike through the area before it and it’s not hard to imagine scenes from LOTR being played out there.  Everywhere you look, it always seems to be a location that could have been used for the movies.  This is truly beautiful country...

 A BIT OF RANDOM

More to come...

Maori Life with Uncle Boy

One night, my tour group stayed the night at a modern Maori meeting house out in Maketu where we ate a traditional Maori meal (which is almost exactly like an American Thanksgiving dinner) and afterwards did a welcome ceremony with their tribe, followed by a performance of traditional Poi and Haka dances.  Perhaps you have heard of the haka dance...  The New Zealand Rugby team, The All Blacks, made it famous by doing it before their games on the field to intimidate the opposing team.  It is one fierce dance and I gotta admit, a bit intimidating.  Here’s a link to what it looks like by The All Blacks: All Blacks Haka.  And here, by Maoris: Traditional Haka. Note that they look like they want to kill whomever they're doing the dance for - so yes, mission accomplished on wanting to intimidate.  The Poi dance is typically performed by women and is more for telling a story through performance and song.

So once the traditional dances were done, they split us up by gender and the women learned how to do two poi dances and the men a Haka dance.  Doing the poi dance is a lot like trying to stand on one leg while rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time.  You need rhythm and be able to sway your hips while twirling a little ball on a string in different directions and sing in Maori.  We ended up having a lot of fun with doing performances for the guys and they for us, because let's face it, when you just learned to do a funny dance with words you don't actually know the meaning of, you feel silly and awkward.    

Cheat sheet with the words to our Poi dance...
because who can memorize this stuff in 30 minutes?

My Stray travel group