New Zealand's Capital

Day 7  Tuesday, March 19, 2019   Wellington

Overlooking the capital city from the top of their "cable car" tram. Our excursion was not extensive - to the Te Papa Museum, up the tram, and then a bit around the city. Our morning project was to buy Janet a new suitcase since her other one had broken its wheels on the flights to Sydney.

 

Wellington is at the southern tip of the North Island, across the Cook Strait. As you can see on the map, it's a west-east crossing (NOT south-north) from the South Island to Wellington. In case the reader is interested, you can see all our eight days/ports on this map as you follow our route from the SW and then up the east coast: Milford Sound, Dunedin, Christchurch (Akaroa), Wellington, Napier, Tauranga, Auckland, and Bay of Islands.

I used the Fitness Room early, looked for my lost jar of Coffeemate, then we ate in the main dining room for a change. It wasn't worth the wait to be served, so that was our only breakfast not at the buffet.

We took the free shuttle bus into town, and in the background are the Wellington Cenotaph (war memorial) and the Beehive, which is what they call that portion of their Capitol building.

We asked a tourist guide (Kia Ora!) where we could get an inexpensive suitcase, and she directed us a ways down the main Lambton Quay boulevard. It had a nice wide sidewalk! We found the luggage store, and it was right next to where our excursion would take us later in the day - to the Wellington Cable Car starting point. Janet found a nice suitcase, and we left it there while we went to a McDonald's for free wifi.

After our free 30 minutes of wifi, we walked back to get the suitcase, then on to the shuttle, and back to the boat to drop off the suitcase and have a quick lunch. From high on the ship, we looked down into the huge Westpac Stadium next to us at the port.

We joined our excursion bus and went straight to the Te Papa Museum. Right next to it was this cool-looking building. It's now a theater, but originally it was the Westport Municipal Chambers building from 1941.

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is the full name of NZ's national museum, opened in 1998. Everyone just calls it Te Papa, which means "Our Place."

 Our guide showed us the extensive exhibits on the Māori. Here is an actual Māori morae, their community meeting houses. On our entire trip, we would see many morae, each decorated extensively to communicate a tribe's history.

 See the detail at the top of the morae.

Our guide explained the population fluctuations during the country's history, and their effects on the economy and politics.

This is one of many Māori canoes ("waka") that we saw in museums or historic presentations during our trip. Large waka are how the Māori sailed to NZ 700 years ago from somewhere in Polynesia.

Te Papa's special exhibit were the Chinese Terra Cotta warriors. We wanted to see it, but the extra cost was pretty high.

Instead, Janet and I split up to see other stuff. I visited the special exhibit called Galipoli, which chronicled the disastrous WWI battle (1915) in Turkey. Anzac forces landed and dug in, but finally during a "Pickett's Charge" type of attempt up the hill, the protected Turks mowed them down from above.

This intricate Māori carving was in the museum lobby. We always loved their showings of a fierce glare represented by sticking out the tongue. Janet and I were truly impressed with how much the Māori culture was blended with the European-based culture in this country. Much of the country was bilingual, and Māori names have been officially added to the traditional names in most places. For example, Mt. Cook is now officially Aoraki Mt. Cook. Another example is how everyone says "Kia Ora", not just the Māori. In all aspects of their lives, it seemed that the Māori were considered equal to the "invading conquerors," and that was a refreshing discovery.

 It cracked us up to see that this stately Bank of New Zealand building is now a Burger King.

Here was the Cable Car arriving for us. Of course, it's a misnomer to call it a cable car, since it's actually a funicular tram. First opened in 1902, it elevates 400 ft over 615 yards to a suburb in the hills above.

The station was modernized in 2006.

Nice views of the bay, looking due east. Our departing ship had to head out and turn right, to the south, to leave the Wellington Harbor before turning east again and then north up the coast.

Another arriving tram car.

At the top was the Cable Car Museum, with this early car.

We were bused back to the ship via the Wellington Botanic Gardens, and this is The Lady Norwood Rose Garden, with over 3000 rose bushes.

Our final stop was at the government buildings, and this is the Parliamentary Library.

A few feet away are the houses of Parliament. It was supposed to be symmetrical, with the architecture on the right duplicated on the left of those central steps. The original portions were completed in 1922, and when they had the money to finish, they would just complete the same architecture on the left. But when they were ready to complete the building in the early 60s, they decided to create a completely new design. The Beehive was the result, completed in 1977. It now houses the Executive Wing.

 

There was new decoration adorning the piazza onboard the ship. It remained for about a week, and we loved it.

A view of the bay as we were departing. We went forward to the 17th-floor lounge, got some wine, and Janet went to the buffet and brought back cheese, crackers, chips, guacamole, turkey, ham, and broccoli. What a fabulous Happy Hour as we enjoyed the cruising scenery ahead!

At the end of Wellington Bay, where we turned east, was the Pencarrow Head Lighthouse (the upper one). It's famous for a couple reasons: 1) it was the first permanent lighthouse in New Zealand; 2) it was operated by a woman, Mary Bennett. She emigrated to NZ in 1840 and soon married George Bennett. In 1852 he took the position of lighthouse keeper of the new primitive lighthouse. Following his death just three years later when she was pregnant with their 7th child, she continued to operate the lighthouse.

In 1859, a proper lighthouse was built and Mary Bennett was officially appointed as keeper. She remains the only woman lighthouse keeper in the country's history. After 10 years as the keeper, she and her seven children moved back to the UK. Some of her kids later returned to NZ.

At dinner, our table for two was in between two other tables for two, and we got to visiting. One was from Germany, the other Australia. We all hated Trump, and they were vociferous about it! Janet custom-ordered two single lamb chops, and she gave me one of them to have one with my risotto.

The theater show was a kick - The Australian Beatles. They had their mop-top wigs on, and the audience sang along to the familiar songs.  I have photos of them in the next posting, since they performed again in the Piazza the following night.