Wellington, NZ - February 10

Wellington, NZ - February 10

Wellington is the capitol of New Zealand and a large city – about 450,000 in the whole metro area. We had decided to take a tour through the mountains and out to the seal coast instead of seeing the city. It looked like it would have been fun to see but that will have to wait until next time. 

 

Our tour started right after lunch and we were lucky to have only 4 people in the back of our 8 passenger range rover so we had plenty of room. There was one other vehicle with 6 people so it was a small group. (I've found afternoon tours to usually be much less crowded) Gorgeous country! We traveled for a good hour through the mountains on a very narrow and twisty dirt road and then came down to the coast and went along the sand for quite a distance. We stopped at an area of jagged rocks with the Leaning Lighthouse in the distance – great pics!

There were only a few seals sunning on the rocks, but one of them put on a great show for our cameras! He preened and stretched and waved his flippers – ok, maybe there were only a couple of us that really got a kick out him but I loved him! Our guide brewed some tea for us and we had some fresh muffins and then it was time to head back through the hills. We saw some deer and a couple ostriches came right up to the fence along the roadway to see us; they were all quite domesticated and were saying 'feed me'. But we didn't.

I was very proud of myself that I managed to do the tour without killing myself [grin]. My foot held up remarkably well, but I was ready to be off of it when we got back to the ship.