Museum and Climbing Mount Victoria

Good news everyone! The weather was nice today, so we were able to get out and about.

Started off with an early morning visit to Te Papa, the Wellington Museum of NZ. However, it didn’t open until 10.00am so we had an hour to kill. We took a walk along the waterfront passed all the joggers and up to a fountain before turning back towards the museum.

At 10am we finally got in to have a look around Te Papa. We started in the top floor and worked our way down, quite clever of us really as we avoided the crowds and when we were finished we were at the door, a handy tip for any future museum trips hey?!! There was a lot about the ancient Maori villages, tools, jewellery and awesome hand carved houses made of wood. We went in one and the detail on the carvings were amazing, they must have taken years! There were displays on animals and birds and one about the Gold Town.

We went in an earthquake simulator which was pretty rubbish but still enjoyed it. I (Ben) had fun with a massive animated baby head and we recorded some videos for the huge video wall area.

The best bit was the colossal squid. An actual deep sea squid accidently caught by fishermen in the Antarctic. It was HUGE!! About 5 metres long, dead of course. It’s eyeball is the size of a football, it’s the biggest ever recorded. FACT!!

After the museum we had a sanga and decided to climb Mount Victoria to the lookout over Wellington. Phew!!! It’s a killer!! A 196 metres up a very steep climb later and we were at the top. Great views of the city, ferry port and surrounding area. We were even higher than the planes which were flying behind us.

After getting our breath back we headed back to the B&B to use the internet, have some tea before packing our bags ready for Napier tomorrow.