Capital City

Today we travelled from Napier down to the capital of New Zealand, Wellington.  It's at the very bottom tip of the north island.

First, I thought I should add to the driving information I mentioned in the previous blog:

- I've found it really hard to get to "know" the left side of the car.  It's natural to know the right side when you're on the left side, but the opposite is a little harder to get your head around.  Maybe if I was taller?  Oh, and I think the front, left tire and rim will be OK.
- Having said that, the bridges on the non-major highways are no wider than they need to be.  Yikes!
- They have funny speeds here - it's either 100 km/h or 50 km/h (unless otherwise posted).  So all country roads are 100.  Then going into town, it's abruptly 50.  We were on a windy road the other day, and the 100 km/h sign was there, then about 10 feet further it said 65 km/h around the curve.  But no one seems to speed beyond the 100 km/h very much at all.  Of course, on these windy roads, doing 100 is risky.

Anyway...it was a pretty long drive to Wellington, about 4-1/2 hours driving time.  But we stopped at the Mt. Bruce National Wildlife Centre along the way.  That gave us a chance to stretch our legs and walk for a bit.

This is the 2nd time we've seen California Redwoods.  They are not natural here, of course, but they thrive in the climate and soil.

There were lots of birds, and in general, they're protecting and trying to increase the numbers of endangered and "at risk" species.  Most of these in New Zealand are birds, the kiwi being one of them.  The reason they're endangered is because man (European man, to be specific) introduced rats, stoats, weasels, and feral cats, which all prey on them because they can't fly and they're not fast.  Prior to Europeans landing here, there were no such predators.  And did I tell you...they have no snakes in New Zealand???  Yes!!!

I'm not sure why they had eels here, but they did.  And they have an eel-feeding time slot, which we didn't see, but hey, they're eels (yuck).



We arrived in Wellington around 2:45 pm and checked into our place.  Because it's the capital city, we wanted to do a tour of the parliament buildings.  The last one was at 4 pm, so we headed up that way and were able to join in.

The newest part of the building is called the beehive, for obvious reasons.  The rest of the building was under renovation and covered in tarps.



So we found out New Zealand abolished the senate in the 1950s.  Hmmm.  What a novel idea.

When we finished with that, we went up the cable car they have here.

Great views of the city and the bay.





Gerard was happy to be on the cable car.

Some street art we saw.

Not sure what this represents...an earthquake?

So tomorrow we're off to the South Island on the Interisland Ferry.  We have to turn our car in, in the morning, and pick up another one in Picton.  Kinda weird, but that's the way they do it.