Author: Oli

We left Tongariro National Park for the 322 km journey to Wellington on a spectacularly scenic train.

We sped past the National Park’s volcanos before the land opened up into beautiful farmland, punctuated by remote frontier communities. As the rolling hills became more pronounced, we passed over a series of gorges with the help of a handful of viaducts. The weather was flawlessly sunny the whole way, although we did pass a rain storm in the distance, which contributed a spectacular rainbow to our view.

On top of the incredible scenery we saw on this journey, the train itself has got to be one of the most comfortable we’ve ever ridden. The carriages were large and incredibly light, owing to the huge (and clean!) windows stretching all the way up to the carriage roof. There was also a full bar, and we hit the jackpot with a comfortable four-seater and table on the best side of the train.

Having said all this, I still have slightly mixed feelings about this train route. It seems that the regular passenger services have gradually reduced over the years while the price of rail travel has increased, resulting in a mode of transport that is significantly more expensive and less convenient than a hire car, coach, or plane (even for shorter journeys). I’m sure this contributes somewhat to New Zealand’s car ownership rate, which ranks amongst the highest in the world. This seems like a surprising exception to New Zealand’s otherwise keen prioritisation of environmental issues, although I do appreciate the difficulties of using public transport to get around such a sparsely populated country.

The following day, we left our Airbnb in the sunshine of a quiet Sunday morning in Wellington. At least, it was quiet until we happened across the Riverfront Market, and it became immediately clear that this was the place to be. Even at 9.30am, there were long queues at the fresh produce market, and food trucks were setting up to serve full hot meals. In fact, the food looked so good that we returned later for lunch and purchased a Hungarian Lángos – a deep fried disc of dough topped with sour cream and cheese, which gave us a nice nostalgia hit back to our 2010 visit to Budapest. We also picked up a butter chicken roti wrap, but sadly Sara didn’t manage to take a photo before I devoured it.

Wellington’s picture-postcard sight is its vibrant red cable car, which shuttles passengers up and down the mountain between the city centre and the botanical garden, with a few residential stations along the way. Needless to say, we gave the cable car a go, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride despite its relatively modern replacement for the previous 1979 cars. At the top station, we explored the cable car museum, where we followed the precedent set at the National Park visitor centre and took a power nap in front an informative video on the history of the cable car. We also learned about the private cable cars that neighbourhoods had built to avoid the steep climb up to their hillside houses, including one household who had ostensibly built a cable car specifically for their elderly dog!

The botanical gardens weren’t bad either, and we had a lovely afternoon stroll amongst the fern and succulent gardens. Hidden within the formal garden though was a lovely grey cat. We only noticed him because a couple in front of us were giving him some fuss, but he still seemed happy to receive some attention from us too. That was, until it became too much for him and he suddenly took a swipe at me. Fortunately, I dodged his paw just in time, but then as we walked away I heard a father tell his son that there’s normally a cat around here somewhere. I hope we hadn’t used up the last of the cat’s patience! 😬

Wellington has something of a reputation for craft beer, and there seems to be a disproportionate number of pubs, restaurants and tap rooms around town selling great beer. We had one cheeky round in Panhead – a steam-punk/industrial themed bar (below left), and another in Little Beer Quarter – a delightfully familiar-feeling pub (below right). The latter definitely stole our hearts, as I don’t think we’d realised how much we’ve missed proper pubs since leaving London!

Wellington is also home to Te Papa – New Zealand’s national museum. Here we learned about the Māori’s journey to New Zealand from Polynesia roughly 800 years ago, followed by European settlement approximately 500 years later. The museum also covered NZ’s indigenous wildlife, and we were shocked to learn that NZ is almost completely devoid of indigenous mammals, short of a few bats. The mammals that have since spread across NZ (rats, possums, etc.) are gradually wiping out some of the unsuspecting and rather helpless flightless bird population, who are bizarrely trusting given their complete lack of natural predators.

We’ve since learned more about the national debate around how to manage the damage caused by feral cats in NZ. The annual North Canterbury Hunting Competition was recently extended to feral cats, which understandably caused a bit of an uproar. Clearly, none of the participants would be able to tell the difference between domestic and feral cats, and thankfully the local authority quickly rolled back on this plan. Still, we couldn’t help but wonder whether this botched competition was partly responsible for our low cat count so far, despite NZ boasting one of the highest rates of domestic cat ownership in the world.

All in all, Wellington was a delightfully comfortable place to spend a few days as a tourist. The cable car and mountains provided a picturesque backdrop to the beautiful quay, the museum and botanical gardens were both excellent and free, and the food, coffee and beer was consistently delicious.

The Lonely Planet had set our expectations suitably low by saying that we could expect good weather “at least several days a year”, so we really felt we’d lucked out with two warm and cloudless days. It’s not hard to see why the locals proudly remark that, “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day”. It really was a great city in the sunshine.

Our brief stop in Wellington concluded our stay on New Zealand’s North Island. Our next hop will be to the lovely seaside town of Picton, on our way to cycle the promisingly-named Great Taste Trail.

From Auckland, we took a 2.5-hour coach to the village of Waitomo. For context, pretty much the only road-based public transport around New Zealand is provided by InterCity buses, the NZ equivalent of the UK’s National Express. Using these buses felt so straightforward compared to much of our transport across Asia. For example, our bus tickets had both the address and a Google Maps link of the departure location – in some places in SE Asia, we were given only the name of the city and were left to work out the rest ourselves!

Almost everyone who visits Waitomo is here to see one thing – the Glowworm Caves. However, arriving in Waitomo village was one thing, but getting to the meeting point for our glowworm cave tour was quite another. The meeting point was inexplicably 10 km out of town, and with no public transport links, we were faced with either a 3.5 hour walk on a busy highway or a 150 NZD (£75) taxi fare. After all three of us had spent hours trying desperately to find a better plan, the rafting company took pity on us and agreed to give us a lift. Phew! It turns out that trying to tour NZ on public transport isn’t quite as easy as we’d thought!

The cave-dwelling glowworms are mysterious creatures. They spend the majority of their existence in larvae form attached to the roof of pitch black caves, where they catch flies to eat and use the resulting energy to produce a cocoon and a faint green glow. When they finally emerge from their cocoons, they have a single day to mate, having been born without a mouth (no street food for them!). Still, it’s the light that they give off that we were here to see, but for that, we needed to get kitted up.

Our caving attire began with a full wetsuit, a jacket and special wetsuit socks. We then accessorised the outfit with a helmet, a head torch, and white rubber boots to complete the look. Putting on a wet and cold wetsuit is never an elegant process, which was good preparation, as it turns out that there’s nothing elegant about caving either. We spent the next hour crawling through tiny passages in the cave to reach an underground river.

Eventually, we reached the river and spent some time climbing, wading and floating through it, until we reached a waterfall. We were instructed that the best way to get over the waterfall was by jumping backwards off it and into our rubber rings. This took a real leap of faith (thankfully helped by our guide giving us a good shove to get us on our way), and ensured there was no turning back. We then floated through the cave, at times forming a “human eel” by holding on to each other’s boots to form a long chain. Finally, our guide challenged us to turn off our head torches and float our way out of the caves in the pitch black, using only the glowworms as a guide to the exit. The whole thing was both exhilarating and magical, and Sara was delighted to tick this off her NZ must-see list, even if she doesn’t look it in the picture below!

We weren’t allowed to take phones or cameras with us, but the guides generously snapped hundreds of photos as we gradually made our way through the cave. However, only three photos ever appeared on the online portal, but they just so happened to be of the three of us. I feel for the other members of our group who only have these super-flattering photos by which to remember their experience!

The following day, we took a walk along the Waitomo Walkway through the lush countryside surrounding the caves. The scenery looked just like something from The Lord of the Rings, which I guess is unsurprising given that most of the filming took place here in New Zealand.

The route wasn’t exactly full of obstacles, although we did come across an ingenious style of gate that we’d never seen before. It took a little investigation before we figured out how to use it, as demonstrated expertly by Mario.

After just 24 hours in Waitomo village, we continued south into the Tongariro National Park, home to three huge and active (!) volcanos.