Before we arrived in Wellington we had to drive to Blenheim to catch our short flight, see picture in the post headline image, and what a drive it was. We detoured via Picton and stopped there for lunch. This is where the ferry port is for the ferry crossings between the two islands. We decided to fly as the ferry services are notoriously unreliable, information I gleaned from A NZ national now living in London.
The drive itself was another beautiful journey with scenery to die for. The 2 hour journey to Picton took us 3 due to the number of stops we made to admire the scenery.
Arrived in Wellington later than planned due to a rescheduled flight by Air New Zealand meaning we didn’t get to Wellington until 6.30, so had the hassle of trying to arrange an out of hours pick up for our hire car, which we managed to do. That’s twice Air New Zealand have let us down, so haven’t got much confidence in them at the moment.
Anyway our airbnb is fine and we met the owner Jo who is very nice. Weather turned overnight so the day looks threatening with plenty of cloud about, but we decided to head out for a walk along the coast to a spot called Red Rocks which was quite nice. Apparently the area is also well known for being able to spot fur seals and dolphins, but sadly today we weren’t fortunate enough to see any.
We then headed off to a place called Zealandia which is a large wildlife sanctuary, mainly to allow native birdlife to flourish and populate, as large swathes of bird species in NZ have been destroyed by predators like possums, rats and stoats over the last number of decades.
It is a lovely peaceful and beautiful environment to meander around listening to various birdsong and forest noise, and we spotted quite a few native varieties too.
Final day in Wellington was windy, showery and cool so we decided to head into the city and have a look around. Checked out Cuba St which is apparently a tourist favourite. It was ok, reminded me a little of the North Lanes in Brighton, stopped for a coffee, and then tried to find the cable car, unsuccessfully. Traffic was a bit of a nightmare so decided to head up to Mount Victoria and get some views of the city from there before heading back to the beach near our Airbnb to catch some windy views of the ocean. After that we just snuggled up in our accommodation and watched some TV, and chilled out – why not!
