Wellington and more!

After spending an epic day summitting Tongariro, time to head south.

I spent the first evening in Napier, a little town on Hawkes bay on
the eastern side of the island. There are lots of wineries in this
region and I was hoping to do a tour but wasn't in town long enough
and too disorganized to get anything going. Instead I spent some time
walking along the a great shoreline and heading up to some bluffs that
overlook the city and caught the sunset there. Not the worst day, but
in hindsight I probably would have skipped it and headed straight for...

Wellington!

After spending a few days in this city I still feel there is still so
much more to see. I was quite fortunate to have a friend I met in the
Cook Islands- Mark- who lives in Wellington spend half a day showing
me around the city, giving me the rundown of the history and the
hidden gems in town. Despite having only ~400k in the metro area-
Wellington is a very centralized city with a ton of great attractions.

Wellington is unique in that they designated the entire range of hills
that encircles the city as a park. Going up Mt Victoria on the eastern
side of the city gives some great views of the city and harbor. But
damn it was windy up there! According to one of the placards, the
winds in Wellington blow at or above ~35 mph for half the year. I've
never been to Chicago but I can't imagine it is windier than Welly...

Some of the other highlights:

Te Papa museum - This is a 6 floor (and free!) museum right on the
harbor in Wellington. Lots of cool things here including a collosal
squid, lots of exhibits on earthquakes and volcanoes in NZ (including
an earthquake simulator), the history of NZ and the unique wildlife
that evolved on the isolated island and how that dramatically changed
when colonization began.

Museum of City and Sea- This contained a lot of the history of
Wellington. The coolest thing here was they

Lord of the Rings movie tour! We had a guide show us around to some of
the filming locations for LOTR and play the clips from the movie that
were filmed there. After hitting about a dozen or so locations (and
doing corny poses mimicking the movie) we headed to Weta Cave- the
museum/store of Weta which did the special effects for LOTR and a
whole slew of other movies. They had some amazing models on display
including the Uruk'Hai, Saurons armor, Gollum and a dozen of the
swords used in the movies.

Finished that off with finding a bar to watch the Patriots play Monday
night football (on a tuesday afternoon!) and then catching the ferry
south to Picton. The ferry was decent but I have to say that some of
the ferry views from Seattle and San Juan islands are more impressive.

More to come on south island adventures when I get a good connnection...