Absolutely Positively Wellington!

We arrived in New Zealand's capital city Wellington (whose slogan is "Absolutely Positively Wellington"-a little catchier than "New England's Rising Star" for Hartford), located on the southern tip of the North Island. After going through our most extensive and strict screening upon arrival at the airport (in an effort to preserve its biodiversity, NZ doesn't allow in any food or plant items, and inspects any outdoor gear- we had to present our hiking shoes, which passed inspection as we'd washed them in Australia), we spent the night in a backpackers before returning to the airport the following morning when Allan and Sally flew in- yay! This was a moment we'd been anticipating for a long time, and one that we looked forward to especially during holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when we were away from family. And all of a sudden, there they were!

Although the NZ temperatures were much warmer for Allan and Sally, for us and our endless summer it's the coldest weather we've experienced in a long time, probably since Turkey. From the airport we passed a "Wisconsin Burger" restaurant chain (NZ has another Wisconsin aspect: lots of dairy farms (the modern milk machine was invented in NZ) and excellent cheese and ice cream!) on our way to our home for the next few days, a hotel suite downtown. Wellington looks a little like a Pacific Northwest city, with San Francisco-like hills: we took a cable car up from near our hotel to the botanical garden, and looked at the observatory. After a brief trip to the Vietnamese Embassy for our easiest-yet visa application (fingers crossed it comes through), we relaxed and caught up with Allan and Sally for the rest of the day, watching some Australian Open tennis on tv.

The next day we set out for the huge Te Papa (Maori words, which we think means "the nation" or "the people") Museum, an excellent natural and social history museum on the waterfront. We learned about New Zealand's geology (lots of earthquakes, given its location on a fault line), how it split from the ancient landmass of Gondwanaland (which also included Australia, India, and Antarctica), and all the weird flora and fauna, like the now-extinct giant moa bird and of course the Kiwi bird. Much of the museum was devoted to Maori artifacts and culture, including a giant canoe and a Marae, or Maori meeting house. New Zealand, while not as recently inhabited by humans as Mauritius, was only settled by the Maori sometime around 500 A.D. After the museum we walked to St. Paul's, a beautiful old wooden church, and then went out to a great dinner that night.

On our third day in Wellington we first visited the City and Sea museum, with more well-presented social history exhibits. We then walked through the steep botanical gardens during a Teddy Bears' Picnic children's day, and saw more of the festival in a cool dowtown outdoor Civic Center performing space. Early the next morning we boarded the ferry to the South Island, a very comfortable ride with views that reminded us of Alaska, with amazing mountains and water. We arrived in a little town called Picton, and endured a couple hour bus-ride with a crazy-talking driver past vineyards, sheep, and deer farms to the town of Nelson, where we arrived just before the rain and looking forward to the start of our Backroads bike trip the next day.