Wellington, 2023: Waitangi Day

We were in Wellington for a week, a week of good weather, if characteristically blustery, but more or less sunny and dry. We did a number of things we normally do (this was our fourth visit to Wellington): Te Papa Tongarewa (the national museum), a national festival, the cable car and museum, the botanical garden, assorted walks around the harbor and environs, the downtown, the peninsula drive...but also a few new things, the Weta Cave tour, some new restaurants and shops. Wellington is one of our favorite cities, and not just in New Zealand. A month, November or December, in an apartment in Welly is now high on our to-do list. Perhaps sooner than later.

We camped first a couple nights at the Evans Bay Marina site, free to self-contained rigs, up to four nights a month, then three at the paid Barnett St. Site, next to Te Papa, then another two back at Evans Bay, and then a final night, before the South Island ferry, at the Top 10 in Lower Hutt. Our stay at Lower Hutt of course was extended as our ferry was cancelled and cyclone Gabrielle hit the North Island. We're now still in greater Wellington, at the Ngati Toa domain, in Paremata, on the Kapiti coast.

We arrived at the Evans Bay Marina on Waitangi Day, February 6th, New Zealand's national founding day, commemorating a treaty between the Brits and the Maori in 1840. Needless to say, it was a somewhat one-sided treaty and has been in dispute practically since its signing. The Maori translation was substantially different from the English version, for example...but let us not dwell on such things, especially since we went to the festival at Waitangi Park mostly for the pageantry and the food and not to celebrate colonialism.

View of the famous windy Welly sign from the
Evans Bay Marina

Searching for the correct bus stop...and watching a cricket match
en route...

Downtown now, and I guess I will post all the art
deco pix in passing, rather than collected together;
Wellington has many art deco buildings of interest,
as well as many other styles...

Near Te Papa, the cross walk signs are in Maori
(!)

The crowd growing at Waitangi Park

This was a mixed school-age group that performed a variety
of numbers, styles

The festival is known for its hangis, but also for its street food;
maybe they mean southern hemisphere?

Oh no!

Chimney cakes...just like in Prague...

The show goes on

But we are transfixed by the Hungry Monkey, and its claim to
serve the tastiest modern Malaysian street food in Wellington;
and the apparatus used to make its one-piece spiraling french fry...

The chef permitted my documenting the event...thus, on the 
Makita-powered rotisserie slicer...

And stretched to its full elongation, before frying...

For a very pleased customer

In addition to entertainment, many were there in
beautiful traditional costumes

The kids doing a haka was a sight and sound to behold

Interim Update #1,274: Still Windy (And Rainy) In Welly

After three days at the Lower Hutt Top 10 Holiday Park, we checked out this (Thursday here) morning, thinking we'd drive on to another interim spot, the domain freedom camping area at Ngati Toa, up the left coast a bit. Near the epicenter of last night's earthquake; more about which anon. The high winds and rain persist, however, and rather than drive in this mess, we have just pulled into the carpark of a large athletic complex. No one's using it presently, and things are supposed to calm down in the next few hours. 

Very much to our surprise, it has turned cold, in the mid 50s. The wind chill with 30-40 mph winds is appreciable; and the 100% humidity makes it worse. I speculate that the former tropical and then sub-tropical cyclone, which is now battering the South Island, has sucked Antarctic cold up to our 40-ish latitudes. It is still high summer here. In any case, we have broken out such cold weather under- and outer-garments as we packed, thinking back in December that we might do some of the high country on the South Island in late February and March. See illustrations.

We awoke this morning to news of a 6.3 earthquake that occurred in Wellington. Actually, the epicenter, we've read, was over off the Kapiti coast, where we're going shortly. Since our abode sits on springs and shock absorbers, we felt nothing unusual...our little rig has been blown and buffeted about fairly constantly since Monday afternoon. We did feel an isolated jolt at about the time of the earthquake, but dismissed it as just another heavy gust.

After an earthquake, I suppose the next thing to expect is one of the volcanoes blowing up. Or, even worse, Australia might invade.... In any case, we'll continue hanging around Wellington until our ferry sails, February 22nd. Unless it's cancelled. Whither then I cannot say. Stay tuned.

The poor birds can hardly get aloft in the wind and rain; the mountains,
but a few miles off, are completely obscured

Bundled up but happily reading

Still laughing at the "Australia invades New Zealand"
video, one of the funniest I've ever seen...

Interim Update #1,273: It's Raining As Gabrielle Passes By

We're parked in a Top 10 Holiday Park in the Lower Hutt Valley, a suburb of Wellington, watching an all-day and all-night rain and wind "event" as former sub-tropical cyclone Gabrielle passes by, pummeling the North Island--many of the places we've visited in the past month--and closing down pretty much everything, even way down here in Wellington. There is much personal and property loss going on as the cyclone passes over. Much if not most of New Zealand's population and property is on the North Island, and is coastal, which is not a good place to be during hurricanes and cyclones (as they're called in the rest of the world), especially when your "normal" tides are 10 feet or more. But I digress.

We're fine. Today was to have been our day for crossing Cook Strait to the South Island. We'd been reading of 50 foot swells in the Tasman and Pacific waters, and I was not excited about a 4 hour crossing under those circumstances. About 2PM yesterday we got an email from InterIslander announcing that all ferry service between the two islands was cancelled for February 14th. With this, Vicki sprang into action, calling InterIslander, booking a back-up on Bluebridge for March 14th. Three hours on hold and constantly refreshing the ferries' bookings websites eventually yielded at booking on InterIslander for February 22nd, which is nothing less than a heroic feat, considering the thousands of persons whose travel plans and arrangements have been undone the last few days. Or weeks if you count Auckland's catastrophic flooding during the "atmospheric river" thing. We were to have spent five weeks on the South Island and to turn our camper back in to Jucy in Queenstown on March 19th. So now we'll spend just under 4 weeks on the South Island but return the camper as scheduled. And lose a day or two watching those old raindrops fall.

In retrospect, having the ferry cancelled is probably the the worst travel disruption we have experienced in our 15 years on the road. Not including COVID-19, of course, which shortened an Asian trip and cancelled a European one...but we kept on traveling, after a few months quarantined in Rebecca's driveway. So we really can't complain. At all. Especially in view of my preference for the North Island. And an upside to the delay is that I can now post about our week+ in wonderful Wellington in relative leisure.

The view from campsite #50

Palmy North, 3: More Art Deco

Our afternoon's exploration of Palmerston North continued, looking for art deco buildings and such other curiosities as might amuse...

Interestingly, Palmerston North has the national museum of the
national sport, rugby; not interestingly enough, however, for us
to go in, steeped as we are in the American national sport of passball

You've got to love a town where the national rugby museum faces
the Theosophical Hall across the street

Lots of Deco Echo around; gratifyingly

The city's art center, a real beauty; if you ignore
the garish paint job...

Our sentiments, too

The city government building, sort of neo eclectic revival...
almost brutalist on one side...

But interesting on another

Les toilettes

Now in the old downtown

Beautiful old theater; still a theater too

Peeking into the lobby

Not the concentration of art deco of Whanganui,
but impressive nonetheless

Palmy North, 2: Team Superstock Car Racing

Thus encouraged by the prospects for amusement afforded by the Gypsy Fair, we proceeded on into the heart of the downtown...

Noticing oldie cars cruising about, generally in the direction of the
growing crowds and automotive noise

Motorcycle side-car racing? Might be unusual anywhere but NZ

Obviously we're on to something

Selling T-shirts, caps, and other goodies by the truckload

No, we've wandered into the annual New Zealand Superstock
Championship: basically, heavily souped-up and armored stock
cars that race around a dirt track, knocking each other off the
track, into the infield, off the wall, whatever...sort of a motorized
rugby but without a ball (read the linked article and be amazed);
"bang racing," which we'd encountered near Canterbury, England,
is sort of a poor-man's version, except it's more combat than a
race...anyhow, the gents to the left, above, are the races' "scrutineers,"
who examine each contestant vehicle for issues related to safety
(people get killed in these races...)(not surprisingly...)

The cars race in city teams, with some designated as racers, some as
chasers, some as blockers...

Here's a team lining up to be scrutineered

Note the subtle differences in powertrain, armor, etc.

I think this might be the racing car

Another team massing to be scrutineered

And another

This would be fun to drive, although not in countries where
drivers are armed and spoiling for a shoot-out

And you thought NASCAR was barbarian...

Palmy North, 1: The Gypsy Fair

In all our trips to New Zealand and wanderings therein, we had always missed Palmerston North. Always somewhere else to get to, not on the way, whatever. Indeed we had gotten to Palmerston South way back in 2009, near the Moeraki Boulders. But not Palmy North, and it was a blemish on our travel record, especially since Palmy is twinned with Missoula, Montana, our last best home, from which we retired in 2008. Sister cities. Once, while working in Missoula, I met with a delegation visiting from Palmerston North. "Oh yes, my son was an orc," I remember the woman saying when I conveyed my interest in LOTR and its having been filmed in NZ. I'd have a lot more to talk about now.

Anyhow, on February 4th, following the climb on Mt. Cleese, we drove into Palmy North, parked, and, even for a sunny Saturday afternoon, found a city bursting with activity and sights, to which this and the next two posts can hardly do justice. First, in a big park-like square right downtown, there was the Gypsy Fair...

We'd encountered the Gypsy Fair once before, near Nelson,
South Island, in 2014, and thought it was mostly about home-made
Kiwi RVs

Here it was about Kiwis traveling about in their RVs and doing
business from them; the RVs were rather less of interest

Recycled roadkill?

Oliebollen! 

Movable futurist entrepreneurship

Itinerant blacksmith

The only interesting rig