Boat stuff shopping and touring

Now the boat shopping begins.  We headed back to our friend's place in South Auckland.  As Jacqueline went off to work each day and we headed into Auckland to exercise our credit cards at the marina stores.  We bought exciting things like thruhull fittings (the mushroom, the seacocks and tailpipes!) and snubbers, real exciting stuff eh! We meet up with Somerset to share stories and some wine and compare our list of boat projects

Friday was a day off.  We did exciting things like laundry and catch up on emails.  Then Jacqueline came home and off we went, first stop a local pub and then off to an amazing dinner at a place in a olive grove about 20 minutes from Jacqueline's house and nope we can't remember the name. But really it was amazing

Saturday saw us back in Auckland, picking up some of the parts that had been ordered and were delivered to the chandlery, always good to buy Kiwi made.  Then Jacqueline took us on a tour of Auckland.  We thought we had seen most of it, but she took us to places (shops and areas) we had not been to, not to mention some neat trendy eatiers.  Back home in time to cook dinner.  Dinner was accompanied with a single malt scotch, which Bruce had left behind, so really Bruce is to blame if we had a little too much and spent the next day relaxing in our PJs!

Monday we were back to touring.  First stop was New Plymouth, a BBH accommodation called Seaspray House. We stayed up late, okay for Cheryl it was late and went to see their festival of lights, a FREE light display in a beautiful park.  Pretty and very well attended.  Then Tuesday we walked the water front, what a surprise.  Then we went on a Maori walk up one of the river beds, lovely.  Stopped for a late lunch overlooking the Tasman Sea, yup water again.  Really we needed to rest our tried and sore feet after almost a 20 kilometers walk. Then another late night we walked to the observatory to look at the stars and we got to see Jupiter along with its moons, way cool. The observatory was $5 and very informal but still very informative

The next day we headed to Mount Egmont for a short hike. Remember we said we had tired feet.  So did the Victoria Loop, with a detour to a look-out, very pretty and yup there was snow at the top.

Mount Egmont

 


New Plymouth waterfront

Then lunch in Stratford!  No not the real one with William, nor the one in Ontario.  We found a pub for lunch.  Back to the hostel for dinner, to pack and get ready for our trip to Whanganui.

On the way to Whanganui we stopped back in Stratford to watch/listen to the Glockenspiel, it played at 10am. Cute but it was hard to hear as it was located right next  to the highway. Next stop DAWSON falls of course we had to go there, this was located on the southside of Mount Egmont.  

Dawson at Dawson

We had lunch in Hawera at a place recommended by Lonely Planet called Indian Zaika, we would suggest that you give this place a miss!

Whanganui was a lovely town.  Once we checked into our hostel, Tamara Backpackers Lodge, we walked the town, including going to two look outs, which was an adventure as it was so windy that it was hard to stand against the wind.  The next day we went to the Art gallery and to the Museum, both which were free and real treats!  The art gallery is closing for a time as the building no longer meets building code, something to do with earthquakes! So the staff were allowed to pick what art was to be displayed and they did a great job.  The museum was laid back and relaxed and just the right amount of stuff.  We found a sushi place in town for lunch then back to the ranch for a glass of wine and dinner you guessed it overlooking the Whanganui River.  The next day we took a jet boat up the river to the "Bridge to Nowhere".  (way back a bridge was built up the river with a promise to build a road to join 2 towns, you guessed it never happen so now it is a tourist spot, and yes there is a bridge called "the bridge that goes somewhere").

Really a Bridge that goes no where

Had a picnic lunch on the bridge and then we opted to take the jet boat part of the way back and then hopped in to a canoe for the rest of the way.  The canoe trip was awesome, we were the only ones on the water and we even went through several sets of rapids and didn’t tip over. As it was getting late and we had already paddled 16km the jet boat came and picked us up and taken the rest of the way back.  The staff of the jet boat could not believe that we did not flip, apparently 80% did! 

One of the many waterfalls on the river

Hey Karen no splashing

We had dinner out with John, a gentleman who lives in Pahia and make videos and  films on things to do in New Zealand plus anything to do with the water,  great company and lots of insights on New Zealand

Off to Plimmerton, a town some 20 km from Wellington, to a hostel called Moana Lodge, which has beautiful views of the bay and the Tasman Sea, yup water again.  Sunday, with the weekend traffic we ventured into Wellington, a 20 minute drive.  We parked in front of the library, right in downtown, and took the cable car up the hill to the gardens and walked around.  Wellington is so hilly they have public and private cable cars all over the place.  We walked the gardens until we were almost back to the bottom, but on the wrong side of the hill, so we walked back up and took the cable car back down and made our way back to the hostel.  Monday was a holiday so we drove back into Wellington in the rain.  We made our way to Weta Caves,  where films like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Avatar were made.  We saw their free video and then Cheryl ran to the ticket booth to get tickets to tour their Workshop!  It was an amazing tour showing how many special effects were done, seeing fake amour and fake skin! 

Karen's new friend

Precious
 

 


















Then back to the centre of the city to a restaurant recommended by Jacqueline, called The Big Bad Wolf.  They specialize in sausage, but I don’t know what was better, the
sausage plate or the duck French onion soup!  Then off to Te Papa.  Te Papa is the FREE national museum  and is so large that it cannot be seen in a day.  On this day we went through the Moari and Volcano exhibits.
The next day we went ‘over the hill’, to Martinbough, a small winery area on the south east side of the north island.  We tried some lovely wines and had an awesome platter at a winery called Poppies.  But the highlight was probably the toilettes in town!  You can only stay in them for 10 minutes and the bathroom tells you this and they play music, all very interesting! Wineries and toilettes what a day. As we got back to our hostel we found out we missed the earthquake, we figured we must have been driving on the gravel road and didn't feel it

For our last day in Wellington we drove in and parked at the Westpac park $9 per day. This put us at the start of the walking tour.  We did most of the walking tour, interrupted by a tour of the parliament buildings.  But only the outside as a commonwealth meeting was taking place.  The guide was very informative and actually talked about most of the sights we were interested in.  We visited two of the old churches, then lunch at the Crab Shack, another place recommended by Jacqueline.  It was awesome.  We had a scoop and a scoop, that is a scoop of various clams in a sauce and a scoop of claims and mussels in a different sauce, needless to say, washed down with a local wine.  Then back to Te Papa to go through parts we had not seen the day before.  We had done Wellington proud.