18th November 2009

We arrived early in a very wet Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand. The town has a population of 350,000 inhabitants. The city's focal point is the harbour, one of the world's best protected. The picturesque rugged hills and cable cars have often caused the city to be compared to San Francisco. Since Wellington lies in the path of the only major gap in NZ's central mountain range, the city has earned its nickname of Windy Wellington.

After a short shuttle ride into the city we dashed out of the rain and into the Tourist Information Centre. With only a few hours here we decided to visit the Te Papa Museum, which is New Zealand's bold and innovative national museum. What we didn't realise was just how big and how much stuff there is to see and so we had to make a difficult decision on what to leave out. In the end we spent about only 3 hours in the museum and we barely skimmed the surface. Hopefully if we come back we have mentally pencilled in virtually a whole day just to do this one museum.

By now the rain had stopped and we were able to appreciate Wellington much better. We decided to take the cable car to the top of the hills and the Botanic Gardens. Construction of the system started in 1901, opened in 1902 and by 1912 a million rides were taken a year. The gradient is 1:5 and at the top we visited the cable car museum. We then took a short stroll round the Botanic Gardens which give great views of Wellington. We could have taken a 40 minutes walk down back into the heart of the city, passing by the Rose Garden, but time was against us and Rosalyn was tiring so we took the tram back down. After another stroll around what is obviously a very busy city with some beautiful shops we headed back to the ship; our visit to New Zealand was over.

The seas were a little rough again as we sailed out of Wellington. I have an update on the breakages that occurred the night of the gales. We now know that in excess of 2000 pieces of crockery were broken not the 800 first mentioned. Two people were slightly injured and I also understand that quite a few bottles of wine (expensive ones) were lost.