After taking a three and a half hour early morning ferry, we said goodbye to the South Island and arrived in Wellington. We had spent 34 nights on the South Island and I was sad to move on because it is incredibly beautiful. When talking to native Kiwi's or other travelers - no matter who you ask - if they've already been to both the North and South island, they comment in a dramatic fashion on how different the two islands are. I was looking forward to what the North Island had to offer and hoping for fewer rainy days and a lot more sunshine.
Wellington is the capital of NZ and the second most populous urban area with around 400,000 residents. We were able to find a place right downtown that had the bare minimum: showers, toilets and a place where we could park and sleep in the van. After a quick shower we headed over to the free National Museum, Te Papa. I was not in a museum mood at all but it was what we had planned to do while in town and had heard from several sources that it was a great museum. I'm very happy that we didn't skip it because it turned out to be extremely well done and a great way to spend the afternoon. It's quite a large museum with six floors covering Maori history, more recent NZ history, NZ flora/fauna/wildlife, earthquakes/geology etc. etc. etc. My favorite sections were walking through exhibits about the sea life found in the coastal waters off of New Zealand and a special long term exhibit on NZ's first campaign in World War I, Gallipoli.
The museum houses the only colossal squid specimen on display in the world, weighing just under 1,100 pounds. We watched a short video that showed how it was caught by mistake in February 2007 by a vessel fishing for Antarctic toothfish in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The squid was brought aboard and frozen, then later thawed and examined by a team of scientists from all over the world. Seeing the care in which they examined the squid was spectacular. The video about the discovery and preservation was much more interesting to me than seeing the actually squid as it looked kind of gross sitting there preserved in its tank. If you'd like to learn more about this topic, check out this website.
As far as the World War I exhibit, I appreciated learning about New Zealand's involvement at Gallipoli and found it extremely sad how many lives were lost. New Zealand suffered around 8,000 killed and wounded during the campaign which started in April 1915 and ended in January 1916. How the exhibit was showcased was beyond words. The Te Papa museum worked with the Weta Workshop to assemble the centennial memorial exhibit. I had never heard of the Weta Workshop but turns out that they are a NZ based special effects and prop company that has worked on movies such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mad Max, Avatar, Narnia etc. Among other things, they are responsible for the creatures in these films, makeup effects etc.
While the several room exhibit featured a variety of formats to tell the story of Gallipoli, the eight rooms with soldiers 2.4 human size were absolutely jawdropping. Despite the scale, these looked like real men (and women as there was one nurse featured). Each figure was in a war like situation and every inch of them appeared real. Completely genuine. Absolutely incredible. The perspiration on their foreheads, the scruff on their face, their bloody wounds, their expressions of grief and sadness. I wanted to stand there and stare at them forever. They were so real. We should have taken some pictures but it didn't feel right at the moment. Although it won't do it justice, please take a quick look at the Te Papa museum website here and see what I mean. I've never seen anything like it before, these figures were breathtaking and left an impression on me that will last a lifetime.
We were about to leave the museum when we heard an announcement about a free dance performance. We were literally standing in front of where it was about to happen so we stuck around to check it out. It was an odd collection of performances which including two Maori numbers, a hip hop number and a solo singing performance of Jake's and my wedding song, At Last, originally made popular by Etta James. The latter made me tear up as it was so random and unexpected and we had not listened to that song in quite awhile. Hearing the lyrics again reminded me of how appropriate that song is for us. The kapa haka performance was great because not only was it well executed, but it appeared to be actual Maori proud of their heritage vs. us paying for some authentic-like performance for tourists. This show wasn't supposed to be in the Te Papa museum, it was supposed to be elsewhere in Wellington but had to be moved to another location at the last minute. According to Wikipedia, "Kapa haka is an avenue for Maori people to express and showcase their heritage and cultural Polynesian identity through song and dance.....A kapa haka preformance involves choral singing, dance and movements associated in the hand-to-hand combat practiced by Maori in mainly precolonial times, presented in a synchronization of action, timing, posture, footwork and sound."
While in town, we were also looking forward to meeting up with Ellie and Will, a couple from the UK that we first met on our overnight boat trip in Halong Bay, Vietnam. They are also on an extended trip and we had kept in touch, hoping we could meet up in New Zealand. Turns out this lined up for our one night in Wellington! It was great to catch up over drinks and dinner with fun people. We swapped travel tips and parted ways as we were headed out of town in the morning.
Wellington is a great city to stopover in. Since we picked up the campervan, we've been cooking most nights and although that has genuinely been great, I thoroughly enjoyed stepping back into my Brooklyn lifestyle of brunch, beers and burgers.
- Jesslyn