As we left Tongariro National Park there was a break in the clouds and just before we turned a corner we saw some snow-covered mountain/volcano side - the most we had seen so far. That was the only real excitement on the drive. We stopped for a break and to swap driver (me to Tom) in a town that had a tribute to a certain type of sheep dog called the huntaway that was needed on hills as the livestock (however many thousands) could hear it bark. We also passed through a town with a giant gumboot at its entrance.
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| Our only view of Tongariro National Park, as we were driving away. |
We were staying the night in Camp Elsdon which had 2 donkeys wandering around it when we arrived. It was very nice and cheap ($20) with hot showers, kitchen and laundry, and was in a place called Porirua - more of an industrial estate than a town really as it was so close to Wellington. We showered and contacted Tom's old schoolfriend James Allen who works in Wellington and met up with him that afternoon. He works for a research centre of economics in consultancy and was good to talk to. He bought us both a hot chocolate in a cafe and we chatted for a few hours. He had to leave us to go to a meeting and we went to the Te Papa museum, ('Te'=our, 'Papa'=place') as it was recommended to us by Helen H-C.
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| Donkeys at Camp Elsdon. |
It was a fairly nice day weather-wise but Wellington was incredibly windy as it apparently always is, so we thought the museum sounded more appealing than a walk up a windy hillside. That and we didn't really know where to go. We only had a few hours in the museum, which is when we tend to reach saturation anyway, but we both thought it was the best museum we'd seen yet. Very modern, scientific, interactive and interesting. As NZ is on a plate boundary they are very interested in the structure of the planet, how earthquakes happen and the different types of plate movement, different types of volcano - and of course a case study for each of them (or several) all within NZ! So there was more emphasis on this aspect than I've seen before, including an earthquake simulation at a rather tame 6.5 Richter scale level, compared with the real 7.8 one in Canterbury last week. There were also exhibits on wildlife in different climates, giant squid, an outdoor geology one with a cave (again relating back to how the land was formed and keeps changing), Maori art - including a real hand-carved ornate house which you had to take your shoes off to enter and were forbidden to take photos, the treaty signed by Maori chiefs and English colonialists. There was also a large room with a satellite image of NZ on the floor that brought photos or videos up on screens arounds the walls of things relative to the tile of the country you were standing on. Another large room had 4 or 5 massive screens that you could point wands at and play with photos already loaded onto it. You could position them, animate them, graffiti them - all with a point-and-click wand. It was quite cool.
Unfortunately we left Te Papa in rush hour so it took a while to get back to Porirua, but thankfully we drove by the Picton ferry terminal which reminded me to book the ferry for the next day, which I managed to do just in time. Back in Porirua we were determined to go out for a meal with wine as we were in walking distance of some restaurants. First we went to get laundry tokens from the office and the lady who gave them to us was very nice and told us where to go and where not to go. In the end we selected a nice-looking chinese. All through the menu each dish came in 'small' or 'large', the 'large' being over $20 which I didn't want to pay. Slightly perplexed we asked the waitress what they meant by this and got the reply "'large' is a full portion, 'small' is a half-portion". I stuck to my guns and still ordered a small but Tom went for a large and it turned out the large was more suitable for 2+ people sharing, as we overheard another waitress telling another table later, so we weren't best pleased. The food wasn't great either - I had sizzling satay pork fat (it was supposed to be pork) and Tom had Kung Po (spelt differently) that tasted nothing like usual. Anyway, the wine was nice.
Back at the camp we had 2 week's worth of laundry to do so we did 2 loads at once in the 2 washing machines and 1 dryer load which unfortunately didn't quite manage to dry everything, so we spent a while hanging things up all around the van and had a damp, late night, ready for our 5am start to get the ferry at 8 the next day.
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