Home » New Zealand » Windy Wellington's Waharoa November 15, 2004

Wellington is New Zealand's Windy City. Every year has about 175 days of howling 60km winds, and this was one of those days. Or nights, rather. All during our first night there, the winds pounded through the little alley our hotel room overlooked. The windowpanes rattled, and it sounded like a raging storm -- minus any water. I've only heard that fierce of winds in a hurricane, yet these winds appeared perfectly normal here and caused no damage.

Windy Wellington's Waharoa November 15, 2004

Ttrealtravels
2005-12-26 15:55:17

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Wellington is New Zealand's Windy City. Every year has about 175 days of howling 60km winds, and this was one of those days. Or nights, rather. All during our first night there, the winds pounded through the little alley our hotel room overlooked. The windowpanes rattled, and it sounded like a raging storm -- minus any water. I've only heard that fierce of winds in a hurricane, yet these winds appeared perfectly normal here and caused no damage.

Upon arriving in Wellington, we had about an hour and half till the Te Papa Museum closed, so we saw what we could. This is the country's premier museum of New Zealand's history, culture, geology, and nature. It's intended to be a "waharoa," meaning a "gateway" in Maori, and through interactive displays, Te Papa lets you enter New Zealand complex past and envision the country's bicultural future.

First, we were drawn to the natural history section that featured a motion-simulated ride called the Time Warp (for an extra fee). This trip took us back 65 million years and showed how New Zealand was formed. What's unique was that it conveyed both the natural science of how the country came to be -- it broke off from Australia/Gondwanaland 100 million years ago -- while in parallel telling the story from a Maori legend aspect. Neat stuff!

Then we explored the excellent exhibit on New Zealand's land, air, and sea animals. The country has no native land mammals -- only birds. Hundreds of years ago, giant Moa birds stalked the lands. These six-foot-high flightless birds had almost no natural predators, just the giant eagle. But both birds suffered when humans came to New Zealand. The Moa and giant eagles are long extinct, and only their enormous skeletons remain in this museum.

Another excellent exhibit showed the geologic forces brewing under New Zealand's surface. Earthquakes and volcanoes were demonstrated with hands-on displays, images, and artifacts. A small shaking house you could walk into gave a live taste of quakes. No big deal for us jaded Californians!

Can you believe that since Peter Jackson and company filmed the Lord of the Rings movies here, they've nicknamed the area "Wellywood"? Eeeghad. That might be taking the fame of the films a bit too far. But nonetheless, they have transfixed the nation's people into a conglomerate of consumerism regarding the films.

In Wellington, we stayed in the Cambridge Hotel, which is an early 20th-century building, and they've tried to recreate that vintage feel in every room. King-size beds (surprise!) and marble-tiled bathrooms. Sounds posh, but remarkably it was scarcely more expensive than the motels back in Hamilton and Waitomo, which catered more to the RVing families. I'll take a king-size bed over a kitchenette any day, thanks.

On our second day in the capital, we explored the rest of Te Papa. With rich interactive exhibits, the museum tells the Maori history and current events, plus the stories of later immigrants to New Zealand. There's a fascinating display on the history of sheep farming and wool production too. And more than a whole floor of the museum is devoted to modern New Zealand art. This is definitely the type of museum you could visit over and over again and not get bored.