Following the injury-ridden weekend’s hiatus, it’s time to get back to the story of our drive south to Wellington. We woke to grey skies at the Fernleaf Farm bed and breakfast, but breakfast raised our spirits — a simple omelette, but full of flavour and surrounded by some of the richest and tastiest fried tomatoes I’ve enjoyed in quite some time. (One of these days I’ll get round to blogging more extensively about the food in New Zealand, it being one of the best things about living here, but in the meantime, take a look at Adventures In Food, an exceptional foodie blog that’s recently relocated Kiwi-ward.)
Cuba Street, Wellington
I offered my EFTPOS card to Melvin, to pay for our night. That, it turned out, would be a problem; they weren’t set up to accept plastic for payment. What to do? He knew we were planning to stay there again on the way back north, a few days later, so he just told us to bring cash then. There is something quite remarkably and wonderfully trusting about many New Zealanders; there is a genuine sense that everyone just takes care of each other. This is, without doubt, A Good Thing.
We headed south through National Park. The name of this town — hamlet, really; it was barely a wide place in the road — had confused me on the road toward it; rather than being a national park, it was a town named National Park. In addition to a petrol station and a few ski-rental shops, the main draw of the town was a turn-off toward Turoa and Whakapapa, the two ski areas of Ruapehu, which continued to loom large.
The clouds closed in as we pressed on, and as we drove further south the sky became increasingly grey. We followed the signposts to Palmerston North as the terrain flattened out, and arrived there in time for lunch.
The town has a reputation for being a touch dull, and we were struck by how utilitarian it felt — there was a war memorial in the middle of a central square surrounded by grey buildings, and the overall feel was somewhat Stalin-era Soviet. The guidebook came out, and we settled on Barista’s as a lunch venue. We found it, parked and went in. We looked at the overpriced menu, the over-artsy surroundings, and went next door, to an altogether more appealing and attractive coffee shop, whose name I’m embarrassed to admit escapes me.
Wellington Harbour
Lunch over, we set out on the final leg of the day, our destination of Wellington a couple of hours away. An hour or so later, we found ourselves passing through Paekakariki. I had set a course to Wellington in our GPS that took us through Lower Hutt, and the machine, eager to please but not quite realising what it was leading us into, directed us left onto Beach Road. This began as a perfectly reasonable idea, but within a hundred yards or so Beach Road became Paekakariki Hill Road, a winding, narrow road barely two lanes wide, with a near-sheer drop-off to the right, and nothing — nothing, not a guardrail, or a fence, or even a rope, nothing — between the edge of the road and a couple-of-hundred-foot drop down to sea level. As soon as I found a convenient place to do so, I turned the car round and headed back down to the coast road.
The coast road, leading into Wellington from Porirua, is much tamer. Waves crashed onto the rocks that lined the Tasman Sea shore, and the settlements gradually became less spread out as we approached The Big City.
Wellington isn’t, of course, a Big City. It has a population of around a quarter of a million, but it’s the capital of New Zealand, and it definitely punches above its weight. I visited the city last November and was impressed then by what a Big-City feel it had despite its relative tininess, and was looking forward to exploring a little on this trip. But last year’s visit had been in the summer, and were, last week, barely out of winter. The sky was grey, the rain was drizzly and steady — but the wind was calm. Wellington has a reputation for, well, strong weather. Windy Welly is its nickname, and it’s one that, I’m told, is utterly justified — this is, I gather, the home of horizontal rain. We were, however, fortunate enough not to enjoy that particular dimension of the city. We skirted the harbour as we drove along the Wellington Urban Motorway (lots of thought went into that name, clearly), and finally we found our home for the night, the Carillon Motor Inn.
I’ve stayed here before, and I had, largely, forgotten, what a slightly odd place it was. It’s up the rather steep hill of Thompson St, and then back down an equally steep driveway. The building is a ramshackle old Victorian pile that hasn’t been troubled by a paintbrush since before the war — the Boer War, probably.
Statue of Gandhi, outside Wellington Railway Station
Reception was deserted. On the counter was a key — not a keyring, now, just a key — with a note stuck to it saying “McCabe — room 11, top of stairs.” Up we went. We assumed, through a process of elimination, that the room with a 1 on it and evidence of a second, missing, digit was probably room 11. We tried the key; it opened the door, so we went in. The room was clean, to be fair, and it had all the bits that you’d expect from a hotel room, but I’d also expect that they’d be in the places that they would be in more, well, conventional hotels. The light bulb, for example, that had been left on our bed would, in a more normal and less interesting hotel, be in a light fixture, but not here.
We set out for Lower Hutt, there to meet Curtis, an online friend we’d not met yet in person. An American now living in Waterloo, he had suggested that we meet at Las Margaritas. It had been many years since Deborah had enjoyed good Mexican food, and I had only ever had the Americanised version they serve in Florida, so we agreed. We got there at six on a Monday evening; they were closed. Andreas, the owner, was most apologetic; he insisted that we accept a drink while we waited for Curtis. I had a cappuccino; Deb had a Sol. Curtis arrived; he also had a coffee. And we were all delighted by Andreas’ hospitality.
Wellington, New Zealand
Dinner, in the end, was at a decent but ultimately somewhat anonymous restaurant on the main drag in Lower Hutt, after which Curtis showed us round the bay a little — we took a cruise along Marine Drive, which follows the shoreline of Port Nicholson as far as Eastbourne, a charming-looking suburb.
Wellington showed promise. But it was late, so we made our way back to the Carillon and turned in; we had an early start and a ferry to catch on Tuesday morning.
(Please note that, because of the truly grim weather we started to face as we continued southward, we didn’t get many great photos. I’ve posted Wellington photos from last November, when I came to NZ on a recce.)
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