North Island Tour with Cait: The Finale

We spent the last week of our trip in Wellington, New Zealand's capitol. There was no shortage of things to do. We spent three half-days at Te Papa, the national museum, in addition to visiting other museums, the expansive botanical gardens, and generally wandering around this cool city.

A modern marae, designed to be the centerpiece of Te Papa. The figures on it tell the history of the country from mythic times to today.

A typical street scene: lots of funky old buildings and good pedestrian areas


The view overlooking the city and beautiful harbor, on a rare sunny day


We rode this old cable car up to the botanical gardens...

where the TULIPS were in bloom!

One of the highlights of our time in Wellington was getting the explore the World of Wearable Art. The official museum is in Nelson (on the South Island), but the 2009 awards show was in Wellington the weekend we were there so the winning costumes from the past 15 years were on display all around town. We spent a half a day just walking around and admiring these wild creations set up in shop windows, city hall, and museums. Check out their website at http://www.worldofwearableart.com/ to see more : )

If you look closely at the silver parts you can see that they are made of fine, hand-twisted wire

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Whew! That catches us up to the present, where we are about to leave Auckland and our home base in the Waitakares with Sue and Richard to head south (again). We will soon be saying goodbye to the North Island and crossing the open sea with Murple to begin a new adventure in the South. We enjoyed our holiday with Cait so much that we are going to put off wwoofing for the moment to explore more of this gorgeous country.