Welcome back to the fourth week of the New Zealand adventure! Thank you for waiting an extra week for this post. My shoulder and neck have recovered from the strange cramping and pain I woke up with last Tuesday. Hopefully with more muscle building, now that my HOA’s gym and the pool I do physical therapy at is open, I won’t be waking up having cramps and pain from sleeping a certain way. Now for the post you (hopefully!) have been waiting an extra week for! If you haven’t already, go to the New Zealand section of my blog page and catch up on the first three weeks. I decided to split the Hawke’s Bay and Wellington Regions into two posts because both regions had so much content, so this post will be about our time down in the Wellington region. Below you’ll read about our visit to a town that’s known for being at latitude 40 degrees south, a windy stay in a Department of Conservation (DOC) hut, our visit to the “Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa”, and our sail across the Cook Strait to the South Island of New Zealand!
In the last New Zealand blog post we had just arrived for a night at the Kairakau Marine Club campground. The next morning we made our way to the town of Waipukarua to stay the night and decide where we’d go next. We chose this town in particular because it is known for being at latitude 40 degrees south. Below are two photos that you come across if you wander around downtown. Photos owned by Jonathan Berkun.
The town of Waipukarua doesn’t have too much going for it other than the latitude 40 degrees south, but it is still a pleasant place to stop on your way down to Wellington if you’re traveling down the east side. That night we stayed at a basic holiday park and decided that we’d stay in the Powell DOC hut in the Tararua Forest for a night and stay at the Holdsworth campground the night before and the night after. The next morning we went downtown and stopped for breakfast and got a few delicious pastries and a few savory pies.
The New Zealand savory pies became one of our favorite things to eat during this trip that at some point while traveling the South Island we had to create a budget to limit how many times we bought them…they are so delicious and come in a wide variety of types but probably aren’t good for your cholesterol. My favorite was the curried vegetable pie, while Jay’s was the butter chicken pie. It’s probably a good thing those pies aren’t made in the U.S because otherwise I would probably be even more overweight than I already am! The next morning we made our way over to the Holdsworth campground and apparently the photo below is the only one taken between Waipukarua and Sailing the Cook Strait. It makes me laugh that this is the only photo we have of our time during this part of the trip, so I felt it needed to be included in this post even though it’s not at all a flattering photo of me.
The Holdsworth campground sits in a lush valley next to a creek. The trail we hiked went up to the Powell Hut on Mt. Holdsworth. Hiking up steep trails for me can be difficult because my legs tend to get very sore unless I hike very slow and drink a lot of water. When you add a backpack to the mix I go even slower. For these reasons I felt uncomfortable doing a backpacking trip up a steep trail that was very long or for several days.
The hike up to Powell Hut was steep but not terribly long and we’d only be hiking up to the hut and then back down (the easier part, or so I thought). The hike had several great views, and I’m still surprised that neither Jay or I took any photos of. The hut wasn’t anything special but had beautiful views. Right before we made dinner another couple showed up for the night. We got to know each other and ended up playing Gin rummy a few different ways because apparently in Germany, where they were from, there are all sorts of different rules you can add to the game, and a few are ones that we still use to this day when we play. That night, as it got colder and colder, we all decided to sleep in the common area where the stove was to keep warm. During the night the wind started to pick up and howl while shaking the hut. We had noticed posters around the hut warning that the hut was not safe in 80mph winds and didn’t think much of it, but once the possibility was eminent, the fear set in. We didn’t sleep too much that night, but it definitely ended up being an exciting night!
The next morning we packed up our gear and hiked back down the trail. The previous morning we had spoken to the Ranger and he had mentioned that no one was planning on spending the night at the Holdsworth lodge the night after our stay at Powell Hut, and that if we wanted to we could reserve it for the night. Thankfully it was a great decision that we did because literally a mile before we reached the hut it started down-pouring. Instead of setting up a tent in the rain, we got to spend a night in the lodge by a fire nice and toasty.
The following day we made our way down to Wellington. To be honest I have no recollection of where we stayed for three nights while down in Wellington. I remember everything we did during the day but have no memory of where our campground was or what it looked like. Jay seems to remember various aspects of the campground and we’ve now narrowed it down to having to be the Belmont Regional Park Campground. Over the next two days we dropped recycling and trash off at a center and went to the “Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa” to learn a bit more about the culture of the Maori people and the history New Zealand. This museum was probably one of the most interesting and captivating museums I’ve been too. The exhibits were very visually appealing and fostered participation from the visitors.
On the 14th of October we set sail! Not literally, that would have been really cool. The easiest and maybe only way to travel the cook strait with your car is by ferry. We spent half our time on the ferry out on the front deck where it was incredibly windy but where the best views could be had.
The photo on the left captures the ferry leaving the Wellington harbor and the photo on the right captures the ferry nearing the South Island and the inlet the ferry took to it’s destination, Picton!
Well that completes my overview of the North Island! For next week I’ll be taking a break from writing about our New Zealand adventure to write about another adventure that was short and sweet but is definitely one that we won’t ever forget! The next post will be an overview of, at that point in time, my longest backpacking trip in mileage and days into a crater. The adventure includes some severe sunburns, a lot of singing to distract me from all the walking and heat, fear of an animal attack, and a visit to a memorable spot where my grandfather had to be rescued. See you next week!
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