Ferry cross the Mersey

Tuesday, 14/08/2012 - 60 A.D. 

One thing I have noticed about sleeping in the roof of a camper van is that I have plenty of vivid dreams every night. Last night I dreamt about Christmas. You know the one where it’s Christmas Eve and the shops have just closed and you realise you’ve hardly bought any presents, let alone wrapped them up? I had that one, and I remember waking in the night and deciding that I had to tell Tim about it over breakfast, which is the regular session for reviewing dreams.

It wasn’t the coldest morning we’ve experienced so far, but it was near enough. I’m afraid I wussed-out of taking a shower -  had one the previous evening, and I had no dirty dreams, so I’m technically still clean, right? Tim went ahead and struggled with the trickle of hot water that came out. To make things even (we’d paid a fiver each for the privilege!) he ‘borrowed’ the plug from one of the sinks. Bizarrely, our van did not come with one and washing up’s always been a chore…probably explains how we regularly get through 36 litres of water in 36 hours. But from now on, washing up will be a joy - deep (water) joy.

It had been decreed that this morning would bring the purchase of a new hard drive for our original laptop. We parked on the outskirts of Wellington and made the computer shop our first port of call. Cha-ching! We got a 500 gigabyte model – twice as big as the last. This way we can lose twice as much data the next time we drop it on the floor. The purchase was all rather straightforward and we found ourselves in the centre of New Zealand’s capital city without having done our homework on what to see and do. Initial impression was that it looked just like any other large English town, but I’m happy to say that we warmed to the place a lot more as the day went on.

It had been a while since we’d had a shot of cultural stimulation so we headed to the quayside where we found the Museum of New Zealand. The permanent exhibits detailed the history of New Zealand, most of it naturally focusing on the volcanic formation of the islands, given that recorded history only goes back a few hundred years. Pretty spiffing stuff all round, even if you couldn’t stand geology at school. The temporary exhibition involved something to do with fur coats, so we gave it a wide berth. The best bit for me was the tank which housed the only colossal squid to ever be put on display – didn’t look quite as long as the giant squid we saw in Chicago, but it was definitely chunkier. Or more colossal. Unfortunately it was forbidden to take photos of anything in the entire museum, so here’s a shot of the entrance.

Speaking of geology, rocks, mountains, etc., we’d always been keen to check out some of the scenery featured in The lord of the rings. Mount Doom had been a particular favourite but today we discovered that we went past it days ago when we were desperately trying to get out of the Rotorua-Taupo Vortex. It’s the highest mountain in the whole of the north island, so I don’t know how we missed it! Never mind, we may yet find The Shire in the south…

Wellington has three parliament buildings, the first two of which look like your regular run-of-the-mill official and important buildings where lots of high-powered decisions are made that affect the national security of the country. The third one is called The Beehive. It was built in 1979 and, well, do you think it looks like a beehive?

What about now?

Wellington is very hilly – not as steep as San Francisco, but the calves and quads and lats (whatever they are) got a good workout today. Because of these hills, Wellington has more private cable cars than any other city, around 400 in total. Yes, that’s private, not just ones that are available for the public to use. In fact, a cable car was constructed for some aristocrat’s aged dog who was having trouble getting up a hill!

We made our way to the town of Porirua - about a 10 minute drive outside of Wellington – and parked up at Camp Elsdon. They don’t have wi-fi here because they mostly cater for school parties and the teachers don’t want the children getting distracted by their electronic gadgets. Consequently we had to use Colin’s phone to book our passage across the water tomorrow (it was a Freephone number anyway). Colin is the manager here and he’s done a fair bit of bush walking in his time. I’ve been asked in an email if I would post a picture of a kiwi bird and I hoped that I would have bumped into one in the bush by now. Colin said that it’s extremely rare to come across them – in 40 years he’s only ever seen the blurred outline of one as it whizzed past. They are very shy creatures and to get a proper glimpse of one you’d need to find a dark spot, sit still for several hours and then, when you think you’ve seen one approach carefully shine your torch at it before it bolts. I think I might just go down the zoo and get a piccy of one there!

But here’s something we did spot today:

It was bound to happen sooner or later, given the high number of private plates in this country. Now I just need to find one that says, ‘JAMES1SK1NG’.

Wednesday, 15/08/2012 - 61 A.D. 

I didn’t realise it at the time, but yesterday was officially halfway through our New Zealand adventure. Does it feel like two weeks into it? Yep, it kinda does. Time to change islands…

Laptop #1 was almost back on its feet, but we just needed to install the relevant drivers so it could do the business like a pro. Unfortunately we had to get an internet connection to do this, and if you’re still awake at this point you may remember that Camp Elsdon had no wi-fi. Never fear, Colin came to the rescue and suggested we hit Porirua public library and get the job done there. I’ve never seen so many people waiting to get into a library. I assumed they were waiting for the nearby art exhibition to open and almost walked through the automatic glass door. It didn’t open until 10:00 and this was 09:50, but cometh the hour the rush was like a department store sale! I suppose books are knowledge and knowledge is power, and although we found a power source, we didn’t find any free wi-fi.

Rather than cry over spilt microchips, we headed back towards Wellington to get our ferry for the south island. It’s a three hour journey between Wellington and Picton and there are two companies that provide the crossing – Inter-Islander and Bluebridge. We’d be going with Bluebridge and we checked-in and queued up with the rest of the vehicles well before our 13:30 departure time.

[James displays the hi-tech plastic orange boarding pass.]

We had no trouble getting on board and went to find a window seat. The whole process reminded me of going to France on the car ferry from Dover every year of my childhood. I felt like I should be asking someone more senior to me if I could have an ice cream and 10 pence for the arcade machines. At first we settled in to enjoy the in-voyage Nickelodeon movie… 

...before heading up on deck to get some final farewell shots as we said goodbye to the North Island…

Although it was only a short trip, it was good to add another form of transport to our list – plane, bus, car, camper van and now boat. The Staten Island ferry doesn’t count as it was a round trip. By `eck though, it was cold up on that top deck, especially when we got out to greet the emergence of the South Island on the horizon. I made a mental note to buy thermal socks and extra thick long johns from the first stockist I came to.

BRING ON THE SOUTH!!!