Finally finished our time on the South Island. We drove to Picton, and drove our car on the ferry to cross over to Wellington.
Our house in Wellington where we stayed for a week was at the top of a large hill. A bit of pain carrying the luggage up multiple sets of stairs. While we were there, we commonly had 50 – 70 mph (80-110 km/hr) wind gusts, as well a couple of good thunderstorms. We could feel the whole house rock in the wind, with the wind and tree tops beating against the windows. Sounds nice when we are tucked in for the night! We understand this type of weather is quite common in Wellington and is compared, at times, to living in a natural wind tunnel. The view above is from one of our floor to ceiling windows.
Tim at Weta Weta Workshop Tour
We didn’t do any real hiking in Wellington, but enjoyed some exploratory walks around the town. One thing we did was a tour of the Weta Workshop. Weta is famous as a special effects studio, both with computer animation and physical set design. Much of the Lord of the Rings set design, costumes, characters, and miniatures were done here. Weta Workshop is known for involvement and creation of many movies (see gallery here), including “Avatar”, “Thunderbirds are Go”, “Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Hobbit” to name just a few.
Another standout was the Te Papa Tongarewa museum, which had a variety of exhibits on World War 1, natural history, and more. We enjoyed a couple of afternoons there.
