After one sea day we made it to Wellington, the capitol city, which is located at the south end of the North Island. Auckland was the capitol until 1865 when the south islanders threatened to secede unless the capitol was moved further south. At the time they were flush with gold rush money so had some pull.

Here’s a pic from the top of the big museum in town.

And another from the top of the cable car. Marty and I hiked up to the top of the cable car through a nice park and steep streets. This is a public cable car. Apparently there are about 65 private cable cars around town for access to residences – there are a lot of steep hills in Wellington which I expect creates a challenge for structural and geotechnical engineers!

The hike up the hill started at the government buildings. Here is the state Capitol building which they call the “beehive” and story tells that the building concept started on the back of an envelope in a bar!

And the old government building across the street has a “New Zealand Christmas Tree” in the front yard. These trees are numerous and have these red blossoms just before Xmas. This one must be a late bloomer.

The Te Papa Museum was very big with lots of great exhibits including more Maori artifacts.

And here they are loaded up and ready for action.

Te Papa Museum includes natural history items like this actual size replica of a blue whale heart for kids to explore.

Timber is the #1 biggest sector of the NZ economy so we saw big stacks of logs at most every port we visited. Dairy is #2 and tourism is #3.

And now we’re off to the South Island. Here’s the south portion of the North Island as we head out to the Cook Strait (named after James) for crossing to Nelson on the South Island (named after Horatio). Always windy in Cook Strait between the islands. And it appears the trees even have a hard time here as well.

More logs in the Port of Nelson.

Our excursion included a trip to:

This local fellow has collected about 180 cars and has most of them on display. Lots of interesting info from our tour guide. And many cars from the 60’s through the present so brings back memories. Note steering on the right side as most of these were NZ cars.

A spin through town included a nice art gallery and park in the back yard.

Getting ready for departure from New Zealand. Here’s view west from our cozy spot in the port.

And a view of the pass to get into the port. Entry requires a sharp left turn and a sharp right turn which led to a 2.5 hour delay in arrival due to high wind.

The handsome couple again.

Here’s our last look at New Zealand as we’ve just heard of a schedule change due to labor issues in Hobart and that we are now headed directly to Sydney to get checked into Australia which deletes our scheduled tour of the fjord-like sounds at the south end of NZ.