March 19. Wellington. Cruise Day 4.

Our stop today was in Wellington. We had extremely rough waters overnight. It was really tough to sleep with the ship rocking and rolling. I didn’t sleep much after 3am.

We were up and off the ship at about 8:20 and met our tour guide Peter for our day long Wellington tour. I didn’t mention it previously, but all our tour guides have been old men. Patrick on our first day asked one of us to sit up front with him because “I’m almost deaf and it’s nice if someone is up here to translate for me.” Yesterday Craig had hearing aids and wanted someone to sit up front too, so Kory sat next to him. Today Peter seemed pretty good most of the time. We were on the tour with a retired couple from San Diego, Ray and Marilyn. They weren’t as fun as our group yesterday, but they also weren’t obnoxious Americans, so that’s a win.

We started the tour by driving around the wharf that makes up the U shape of Wellington city. Due to the 2016 earthquake that was 7.8 magnitude many buildings are still empty as they away reinforcement or reconstruction.

Wellington and the immediate suburbs have a population of 430,000, for the 2^nd largest in New Zealand. The architecture mirrors San Francisco. It is really quite similar with the hilly terrain, high homes, and using all the available space building up and out over the steep drop offs.

Something totally unique is that there are more than 400 private cable cars that take home owners up or down the hills to/from the streets and their garages they build out and over the terrain. It was crazy that they had their own little mode of transportation from the street to their home.

Wellington is defined by earthquakes. It lays right on the Pacific/Australia fault line and there were major earthquakes in the 1400s and 1800s that pushed land up and out and defined the terrain of today.

Our first stop after we drove through the city was Mt. Victoria, a beautiful lookout over the city and the sea. The park is part of a “city belt” that was established in the 1800s that put a lot of the land in a public trust that can only be used for sport and recreation activities. It is like one big park that surrounds the city and also includes botanical gardens, rose gardens and the Begonia house.

The city is called “Windy Wellington”. Due to its location there are almost always cold winds blowing. It is the capital that is furthest southern capital in the southern hemisphere. We have heard that a lot on this trip… a lot of “the tallest,” “the biggest,” “the greatest,” “the first,” in the southern hemisphere… Which leads me to believe there isn’t much else in the southern hemisphere.

From the lookout, we continued our driving tour along the coastline and heard stories of the Cook Straight and the distance between the North Island and South Island. It connects the South Pacific Ocean with the Tasman Sea.

Following the driving tour, Peter dropped us off at the Weta Workshop for a 90 minute tour. This place has armies of artisans working on all types of things for movies, most famously the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. Though they really have worked on hundreds of movies that have amassed more than 400 Oscars. Everything from Power Rangers to Marvel Movies to Horror Movies to Narnia, Stranger Things, and on and on. They have make-up artists, weapons makers, props masters, special effects of all sorts and so many other things. It was crazy to see the painstaking processes behind such little details. No photos were allowed inside.

This also reminds me that Peter Jackson, famous movie director and New Zealand native, was mentioned by Peter no fewer than two dozen times. The properties he owns in the area (more than 300 million worth,) the philanthropic work he does, and his interest in keeping World War history alive.

Next, we toured the city center and took the famous Wellington Cable Car to the top and had one last great view of the city.

Our last stop was at the New Zealand parliament and government buildings. Of interesting note is that New Zealand was the first country to allow woman to vote in 1893. They had very different building styles, the most interesting of which was the "beehive" built in the 70s.

It was an activity and information packed seven hours. Peter was a great guide and we returned to the ship at about 4:30pm.

I spent a couple hours catching up on blog posts and then we went to dinner and watched a funny activity. The cruise ship staff had different passengers come up and if they could talk for two minutes without the passenger saying yes or no, they won a prize. It was hilarious to see how hard such a simple game was.

Rainbow as we departed Wellington.

Then, it was time to head back to the room and turn in early to catch up on sleep and get ready for another busy touring day.