Train to Wellington

Most of these pics are self explanatory. The mountain is Ruapehu, an active volcano in the Tongariro National Park. Seeing it was special for me, because I taught lessons about its last eruption in 1995 to my Year 10's this year, all based on what I had read. It makes it easier to talk about something when you have more experience of it. Now I have my own pictures to add to next year's lesson.
After we passed Ruapehu we followed a river that had cut its way deeply through the rock and made a gorge. Stuart fell asleep at this point!
The train was older and more rattly than I had expected. The views were exceptional, but for a long way the train could only travel at 40km/h which added an extra hour to the 12 hour journey. On the upside, the buffet car was selling decent food and at quite a reasonable price (e.g. chicken curry for $6, a hot drink for $2) we spent a small fortune on refreshments but would have needed a second mortgage to buy the same stuff on a UK train. We could also get off and stretch our legs about 4 times on the journey.

Flight to Auckland

Waiting to take off at Kaitaia Airport. Thumbs up to the people who run this place. It is very small, with 2 commercial flights to Auckland a day, but despite that it was friendly, efficient and saved us a 5 hour plus trip in the car.

The plane seats 19 passengers and almost everyone gets a window seat.

The aerial view is of Kaitaia town. In the foreground is our house. At the back is the bottom part of 90 mile beach and the sand-dunes of Ahhipara.

Summer holiday

We are back from our summer holiday in Wellington and readjusting to the rural life once more. Anyone would think we had been away for weeks. In fact we flew from Kaitaia Airport on Monday afternoon and arrived back on Saturday lunch-time.

That is not to say that we did not pack in a lot of stuff. For starters we went on loads of different btypes of transport: plane to Auckland, train to Wellington, boat out to Matiu-Soames Island, bus to the airport, taxi back from a restaurant, cable-car up to the Botanic Gardens, Ute back from the airport, on foot around the place. We spent quite a lot of time discussing Kayaks, but did not actualy venture out into the harbour in one.

We can see why they call it windy wellington - 2 out of 3 full days, it was very windy. It was also cloudy and not really warm enough to be going round in T-shirt and shorts. It certainly felt good to get back to the hot sun of Kaitaia yesterday.

Our accommodation was the Backpackers next to the railway station. Very convenient location for a family obsessed with modes of transport. We could not actually see the trains because our room was facing the front of the station. We could hear them though. We did get good views of the big container boats in the harbour and also of the inter-island ferries that go to South Island.

The room was a dormitory with 3 double bunks in it. En-suite bathroom with shower and toilet. Chantelle cunningly converted the shower into a bath by making a plug out of a drink bottle top, so we had an indoor bath. What luxury! It was a little bit awkward as we had a stranger in the room one night. He was a pleasant enough guy on a farming exchange from Canada and he was no trouble, the boys liked him. After that we asked that the bed be blocked, because the next person could be dodgy for all we knew. Socially it was an odd place. All these young back-packers doing their world tours but all so intense and insular. I had expected that people would be more open to talking. Perhaps that happens more in smaller places than the one we stayed in.

Highlights for me were seeing red-crowned parakeet on Matiu Soames Island, seeing the snow-capped peak of Ruapehu from the train, seeing genuine toe-toe in National park and seeing how different it was from pampas grass. I also enjoyed the genetics exhibition at Te Papa and the talk on the stars in the Carter observatory.

Stuart and Patrick seemed to particularly like going on a climbing wall at the quay. I will have to post again for Chantelle and Eric's favourite bits.

I will stick up some pics now and then add some more later as it takes quite a while to do each batch.