Windy Welly

This morning we left Wellington for the South Island.  We had a great few days exploring "Windy Welly" as it is called by the locals!

We arrived in Wellington on Thursday and luck had it that the Te Papa museum, New Zealand's national museum, stays open late on Thursday nights.  After a fantastic Malaysian dinner on Cuba Street, we headed toward the museum.  We learned a lot about NZ and the native Maori culture. One interesting bit was a short film that showed Neil Armstrong placing the NZ flag on the moon instead of the American flag...that got a good laugh out of me and David.  Hopefully it was just meant as a joke and they aren't trying to rewrite history!!

Bustling Cuba street in Wellington

The interactive map at the Te Papa Museum

One of Friday's highlights was a cable car ride to the top of Wellington's city center and a nice walk through the Botanic Gardens back down to the city.  Our next stop was Mt. Victoria.  We had planned to drive to the lookout point, but one of the salespeople we met in a store told us that it was best to walk from Wellington's city center.  Although a nice walk, it was fairly steep and was about an hour longer than we were expecting.  After taking in the beautiful view, we saw a map on the way down, which confirmed that we had gone about 3 miles out of the way to get up to the lookout...no wonder it seemed so long!

Wellington Cable Car

At the Mt. Victoria lookout

This morning we loaded 'Sunny' onto the Interislander for a three hour ferry ride to the South Island.  We heard that it could get quite rough in the Cook Straight, but we had a really smooth ride and were able to enjoy entering the South Island through the Marlborough Sounds. 

All in all, the North Island was fantastic...let's see if the South Island can top it!