As our bus neared Nelson, we passed fields of hops which is exported all over the world, especially to places like Germany and the US for beer production. We also passed groves of kiwi fruit, or so we were told. Kiwi is a very fragile fruit and so to prevent the fruits from being damaged by the wind, the groves are usually surrounded by rows of other trees which serve as a break wind and make it difficult to see the kiwi trees themselves.
During one of the rest stops on our way to Nelson, the bus driver had asked everyone where they were staying so that he could drop off people who were staying outside of the city at their hotels rather than at the bus station. Everyone else was either staying downtown or meeting people as the bus station, so when I told the bus driver that I was staying at the Almond House, he offered to drive me there since it was a few blocks from the bus station.
During the short drive from the bus station to the hostel, he told me that since 9/11, the property values in Nelson have doubled. According to the bus driver, there has always been a large population of people from the US who live in Nelson for half the year during the New Zealand summer. Since 9/11, a lot of these people have now decided to live in Nelson year round which has sparked a housing shortage. As we drove into Nelson, we had seen new, luxury apartments being built along the coast. Most of these apartments are sold before they are even built. What is crazy is that many of these apartments are built into the side of cliffs and overlook the container port which is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The drastic rise in home prices is great for people that can sell their houses and move from Nelson, but it makes it difficult for people who want to move to the city.
A few days later, the shuttle driver who drove me from the hostel to the airport also confirmed that the prices have skyrocketed in the past two years, although he did not connect it with 9/11. As we drove to the airport, he pointed out a few new house lots that were being sold without houses for $100,000 and these were next to the main road. These were the usually 1/4 acre lots on which would be built ranch style houses. He also told of a man from the US who had come in last year and had bought up huge sections of orchids on one of the surrounding hills. The orchid owners named their own prices and the man paid. But, now he is selling sections of the orchids as house lots and stands to make back three times his investment.
I also read in one of the newspapers editorials that New Zealand is currently advertising in California to attract people to invest in the country. The move is a switch from similar campaigns which in the past targeted people in countries such as Japan. According to the article, southern California is being targeted because the climate is so similar to that in New Zealand. The author of the editorial grumbled a bit about how the US investors were driving up prices in New Zealand, especially Nelson in probably the same way that people in the US grumbled about the Japanese buying up property in Manhattan.
The South Island is also becoming a bigger player in the luxury yacht market. The luxury yachts can take upwards to two years to build and therefore some buyers prefer to buy yachts which have already been built rather than to place orders for custom yachts. Since the New Zealand Dollar is still less valuable than the US Dollar, a yacht purchased of the rack in NZ is still less expensive than the same one bought in the US. According to my sources, the yachts that are currently being built in cities such as Nelson are being sold as soon as they are finished.
I arrived at the Almond House where I would be staying for the next two nights and found my way out back where I was met by the manager. She was a friendly woman in her late 40’s who showed me the shared room and fetched me bedding while I chose one of the six beds. The hostel is mostly rooms with two beds each and has only one shared room. There is a house on the street that is part private and holds a few of the rooms. Out back is a grassy courtyard around which the rest of the rooms are located in a L-shaped building. There is also a small pool and a small building that contained the well stocked kitchen and common area with a TV and tons of information about the neighboring Abel Tasman park. Almost all hostels in New Zealand come with kitchens that include stoves, refrigerators, pots, pans, dishes, hot water kettles, toasters and storage space for the guests food. So basically, you can save a bundle of money by cooking your own meals rather than having to eat out each night. I saw a lot of people who have cars bring in a cardboard box with their food items in it which they use at each hostel and then take away with them. The hostel also had tables and chairs in the courtyard where people could lounge and eat their meals.
Although the shared room was a bit claustrophobic with only a skylight for air, the hostel was really nice and quiet. I later met the owner who lives across the street. She told us that she purposefully advertises her hostel in a way that discourages the big bus tours from stopping there to maintain the intimate feel of the hostel. She told us that a few weeks ago, a man from the US who had stayed there for a night had made an offer for the hostel, but as she had only owned it for a year, she was not yet ready to sell it.
I wandered into town in search of a grocery store where I could buy the ingredients for dinner. I was very pleased to see a large grocery store, similar to what you might find in the US. In fact, there was also a Woolworths which was a large grocery store. In Christchurch and in Auckland, one only finds little grocery stores downtown that have maybe one or two aisle. This is not the case of big stores versus mom and pop stores. The urban stores are all chains as well, but they are limited in variety and high in price.
Back at the hostel, I ate in the courtyard and later chatted with one of my roommates. He was from the UK and a molecular geneticist by degree. But, he had been working in hospitality for the past few years in the UK until he had enough of it. He decided to leave his job in the UK and to travel around NZ for a year. He was traveling solo which he described as both liberating and disappointing. Liberating because you could do what you want, but disappointing because he had no one to share it all with. I told him that I would be heading up to Taupo next to hike the Tongariro Crossing. He had just come from there and he told me that the hike had been fabulous and that it should be no problem for a hiker like myself. I was confused as to why he thought I was a serious hiker until I remember the heavy, full grain leather boots that I was wearing. They were the only footwear that I brought other than my dress shoes because I had no room for anything else.
We also met another roommate, Vikki from Essex in the UK. She had just driven into town and was going out for the night with a friend of hers from the UK who happened to be in town as well. When she bid us farewell to go out to the bars, the guy from the UK sighed and reported that all women from Essex were party animals and that we would not see her again till morning which turned out not to be true.
I stayed up for a while, trying to figure out what to do the next day. I had just assumed that there would be a lot of hikes and adventure things to do in Nelson, but I was wrong. Nelson was just a gateway to Abel Tasman park and if I wanted to hike, to kayak or to swim with dolphins, I would have to catch the 8AM bus to the park. I later learned that if I had planned ahead better, I could have been picked up by the kayak companies at the hostel. I also feared about getting to the park and finding out that without reservations, I would not be able to find a kayak. So, I opted to stay in town and wander about which was a bad choice. I should have gone to the park, but at the end of the day, I was in NZ, the sun was shining, the temperature was in the 70’s and I had nothing to do but to explore.
We all settled in around 1AM with the exception of three Israelis in or room who were party animals and came in quite late which is the disadvantage of a shared room.
In the morning, I wound up having a leisurely breakfast of toast and coffee with Vikki. She was in her late 20’s and had been a physical education teacher at a high school. One of her friends had recently left for a year of travel and kept sending postcards back to Vikki to try to get her to leave. But, Vikki was not ready to make that sort of leap. Then one day, Vikki was playing basketball with her friends when she jumped up and somehow managed to tear her Achilles tendon. She had not realized just how bad the damage was until she drove to the hospital where they immediately performed surgery to repair the damage. It took months before she was able to walk again. She told me that she remembered sitting in the hospital right after the injury happened and looking at her life. She looked at the going to and from work, the meetings and shopping for food at night because that was the only time that she had and she decided that she had had enough. Furthermore, she had broken up a few months ago with her boyfriend of several years and she was yearning to exercise a bit of independence. Vikki ended the term at school, sold her house in Essex and flew to New Zealand where she bought a car and has been traveling ever since. She has been traveling from place to place ever since and enjoying herself immensely.
After breakfast, Vikki headed out to the beach with friends and I decided to wander into town to find the information office to see what there was to do. Nelson is a sprawling town with rapidly growing suburbs. The city itself is divided by unpopulated hills which reach into the populated areas like fingers and separate the downtown from the beaches. The downtown area is nice with low buildings and palm tree-lined streets populated with little stores, restaurants and cafes. However, the Vikki reported that the bar area was a bit skanky. The downtown area is dominated by the Anglican cathedral which was built in 1924 and modified several times since. The city is also home to the World of Wearable Arts which showcases art that can be worn as clothing.
I set out for the surrounding hills and hiked up to a summit where a metal sculpture marks the geographic center of New Zealand. I was instructed by the manger of the hostel that I had to take a picture of my feet, one on each side of the marker if I were to achieve the real Kiwi experience. On the hill, I ran into Lexis and Totte who were a really nice couple from Malmö, Sweden (located across the Øresund from Copenhagen). Lexis is originally from the Philippines and her family has recently moved to Auckland. She and Totte had come to tour around the country and hoped to later find jobs so that they could immigrate from Sweden. I don’t know why they would want to leave the dark, rainy winters of Malmö, Sweden or the gorgeous summers of NZ. They were currently traveling through NZ as part of the Kiwi Experience which is a package transportation deal. They got stuck in Nelson because it is one of the only cities that you need bus reservations to leave and so they were making the best of their day.
I continued to hike through the hills, but it was not as good as the hikes in Abel Tasman would have been. I had to wear a hat and lots of sun block for protection from the rays of the sun. According to the manager of the hostel, in Australia school children are now required to wear hats when they go out to play and those who do not are punished. The hat rule is catching on in NZ as well due to the intense radiation thanks to the hole in the ozone layer in the southern hemisphere. It now takes less than ten minutes of exposure to the sun for a burn to occur and everyone picks up a farmers tan pretty quickly.
After the hike, I returned to the hostel where I had a great swim followed by a shower. I found that I now had two women from the US as roommates as well as a man from the UK who had just brought his motorcycle over on the ferry to Pincton at 4AM to take advantage of the discount in cost and who slept for most of the evening. The women from the US had been in Taupo the week before and they had tried to hike part of the Tongariro Crossing in the rain. They reported that it just was not worth it because the heavy clouds limited visibility to only a few feet. They saw some hikers who were making the trek without heavy gear and they reported that they looked miserable. I called a company in Taupo that runs a shuttle to the Tongariro Crossing and the message I heard reported bad weather and that all tours were canceled for the day. It was not a good sign.
For dinner, I had bought some of the green-lipped muscles which are native to the area. I found plastic containers of precooked and shelled muscles in Woolworths and expected to just bring them back to warm them up without the mess of the shells in the communal kitchen. However, much to my dismay the muscles were pickled in vinegar, much like picked herring. I had bought a lot because I like muscles, but due to the high vinegar content, I could not eat them all which was disappointing.
The morning brought with it rain and cloudy skies. I made some breakfast, bid farewell to everyone and went out front to catch the airport shuttle that I had booked to catch my flight to Taupo. I had opted to fly first to Wellington and then to Taupo on Origin Airline, a domestic airline to save time. Plus, the flight from Nelson to Wellington was $69 and took about 20 minutes whereas the bus and ferry to cover the same distance would have taken five hours and would have cost the same. The flight up to Taupo saved another seven hours over the bus or the train and cost less since I had booked in advance.
On the airport shuttle, I met a family from Canada. There was a mother and her daughter and young son. The daughter had a scarf over her face like robbers in the old westerns and the mother explained that a bug had bitten her on her face and she was having a bad reaction. They were also going to Taupo, but were considering canceling their plans so that they could go to the hospital to see a doctor about the swelling. The daughter said something about the problem and although her voice was muffled, I could have sworn she dropped a f bomb. I was surprised since she looked young behind her scarf, but later I learned that she was actually in her 20’s and living in NZ for a few months on her own.
We arrived at the airport in the rain and discovered that our flight was delayed for over an hour due to the weather. The problem was that our plane was coming from Christchurch and it was delayed there due to fog. I hung out in the airport and noticed that the Canadian family had disappeared. Later on, just as we were about to board our flight, they reappeared. The mother who was visibly relieved told me that they were unable to change their tickets and so they thought that they were not going to be able to go. But, thanks to the delay, the had been able to catch a taxi to the airport where they had been met by a specialist who knew exactly what was wrong with the daughter and was able to prescribe something to reduce the swelling. The mother told me that thanks to the NZ healthcare system, even as guests in the country, the visit to the emergency room and the treatment were all free.
We boarded our little, twin propeller plane and I was amazed that we did not go through a metal detector. When I checked in, I didn’t even have to give an ID to prove who I was. I just told them my name and that I had an eticket and they issued me a boarding pass. I don’t even know if our baggage went through a metal detector. The cockpit door was a screen. The flight to Wellington was uneventful and we arrived with only 30 minutes to wait for our flight to Taupo. The Canadian mother was also amazed at the lack of security as she had been worried about moving their Leathermen to their checked luggage at which point I remember that mine was still in my pocket. Oops.
Wellington is home to Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is where the Return of the King was premiered and the cast spent a lot of time in the city. A large display on the airport building features Gollum and welcomes visitors to Middle Earth. Inside the airport, numerous costumes from the film are on display.
Wellington is an international airport and so I assume that to get to the international flights, passengers would have to go through more screening. What was also odd was that the airport tower was located near the airport, but in a residential neighborhood with houses all around.
We boarded our flight to Taupo which was another twin prop plane and settled back for an uneventful flight.
I assume that you have seen the common story which I was told by some of the people that I have met as to why they came to New Zealand to travel. New Zealand, Australia and SE Asia are most certainly the destinations of choice for people who have tired of their life and have decided to travel for a year. Are these truly adventurous people or are they tormented souls on the run? Whatever their reason for their decision to quit their jobs, to sell their possessions and to travel, one can not deny the courage that it must have taken and the strength of will to live out of a backpack for a year. Eventually they will face the question of what to do next. I wonder what will happen when they try to go back.
During one of the rest stops on our way to Nelson, the bus driver had asked everyone where they were staying so that he could drop off people who were staying outside of the city at their hotels rather than at the bus station. Everyone else was either staying downtown or meeting people as the bus station, so when I told the bus driver that I was staying at the Almond House, he offered to drive me there since it was a few blocks from the bus station.
During the short drive from the bus station to the hostel, he told me that since 9/11, the property values in Nelson have doubled. According to the bus driver, there has always been a large population of people from the US who live in Nelson for half the year during the New Zealand summer. Since 9/11, a lot of these people have now decided to live in Nelson year round which has sparked a housing shortage. As we drove into Nelson, we had seen new, luxury apartments being built along the coast. Most of these apartments are sold before they are even built. What is crazy is that many of these apartments are built into the side of cliffs and overlook the container port which is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The drastic rise in home prices is great for people that can sell their houses and move from Nelson, but it makes it difficult for people who want to move to the city.
A few days later, the shuttle driver who drove me from the hostel to the airport also confirmed that the prices have skyrocketed in the past two years, although he did not connect it with 9/11. As we drove to the airport, he pointed out a few new house lots that were being sold without houses for $100,000 and these were next to the main road. These were the usually 1/4 acre lots on which would be built ranch style houses. He also told of a man from the US who had come in last year and had bought up huge sections of orchids on one of the surrounding hills. The orchid owners named their own prices and the man paid. But, now he is selling sections of the orchids as house lots and stands to make back three times his investment.
I also read in one of the newspapers editorials that New Zealand is currently advertising in California to attract people to invest in the country. The move is a switch from similar campaigns which in the past targeted people in countries such as Japan. According to the article, southern California is being targeted because the climate is so similar to that in New Zealand. The author of the editorial grumbled a bit about how the US investors were driving up prices in New Zealand, especially Nelson in probably the same way that people in the US grumbled about the Japanese buying up property in Manhattan.
The South Island is also becoming a bigger player in the luxury yacht market. The luxury yachts can take upwards to two years to build and therefore some buyers prefer to buy yachts which have already been built rather than to place orders for custom yachts. Since the New Zealand Dollar is still less valuable than the US Dollar, a yacht purchased of the rack in NZ is still less expensive than the same one bought in the US. According to my sources, the yachts that are currently being built in cities such as Nelson are being sold as soon as they are finished.
I arrived at the Almond House where I would be staying for the next two nights and found my way out back where I was met by the manager. She was a friendly woman in her late 40’s who showed me the shared room and fetched me bedding while I chose one of the six beds. The hostel is mostly rooms with two beds each and has only one shared room. There is a house on the street that is part private and holds a few of the rooms. Out back is a grassy courtyard around which the rest of the rooms are located in a L-shaped building. There is also a small pool and a small building that contained the well stocked kitchen and common area with a TV and tons of information about the neighboring Abel Tasman park. Almost all hostels in New Zealand come with kitchens that include stoves, refrigerators, pots, pans, dishes, hot water kettles, toasters and storage space for the guests food. So basically, you can save a bundle of money by cooking your own meals rather than having to eat out each night. I saw a lot of people who have cars bring in a cardboard box with their food items in it which they use at each hostel and then take away with them. The hostel also had tables and chairs in the courtyard where people could lounge and eat their meals.
Although the shared room was a bit claustrophobic with only a skylight for air, the hostel was really nice and quiet. I later met the owner who lives across the street. She told us that she purposefully advertises her hostel in a way that discourages the big bus tours from stopping there to maintain the intimate feel of the hostel. She told us that a few weeks ago, a man from the US who had stayed there for a night had made an offer for the hostel, but as she had only owned it for a year, she was not yet ready to sell it.
I wandered into town in search of a grocery store where I could buy the ingredients for dinner. I was very pleased to see a large grocery store, similar to what you might find in the US. In fact, there was also a Woolworths which was a large grocery store. In Christchurch and in Auckland, one only finds little grocery stores downtown that have maybe one or two aisle. This is not the case of big stores versus mom and pop stores. The urban stores are all chains as well, but they are limited in variety and high in price.
Back at the hostel, I ate in the courtyard and later chatted with one of my roommates. He was from the UK and a molecular geneticist by degree. But, he had been working in hospitality for the past few years in the UK until he had enough of it. He decided to leave his job in the UK and to travel around NZ for a year. He was traveling solo which he described as both liberating and disappointing. Liberating because you could do what you want, but disappointing because he had no one to share it all with. I told him that I would be heading up to Taupo next to hike the Tongariro Crossing. He had just come from there and he told me that the hike had been fabulous and that it should be no problem for a hiker like myself. I was confused as to why he thought I was a serious hiker until I remember the heavy, full grain leather boots that I was wearing. They were the only footwear that I brought other than my dress shoes because I had no room for anything else.
We also met another roommate, Vikki from Essex in the UK. She had just driven into town and was going out for the night with a friend of hers from the UK who happened to be in town as well. When she bid us farewell to go out to the bars, the guy from the UK sighed and reported that all women from Essex were party animals and that we would not see her again till morning which turned out not to be true.
I stayed up for a while, trying to figure out what to do the next day. I had just assumed that there would be a lot of hikes and adventure things to do in Nelson, but I was wrong. Nelson was just a gateway to Abel Tasman park and if I wanted to hike, to kayak or to swim with dolphins, I would have to catch the 8AM bus to the park. I later learned that if I had planned ahead better, I could have been picked up by the kayak companies at the hostel. I also feared about getting to the park and finding out that without reservations, I would not be able to find a kayak. So, I opted to stay in town and wander about which was a bad choice. I should have gone to the park, but at the end of the day, I was in NZ, the sun was shining, the temperature was in the 70’s and I had nothing to do but to explore.
We all settled in around 1AM with the exception of three Israelis in or room who were party animals and came in quite late which is the disadvantage of a shared room.
In the morning, I wound up having a leisurely breakfast of toast and coffee with Vikki. She was in her late 20’s and had been a physical education teacher at a high school. One of her friends had recently left for a year of travel and kept sending postcards back to Vikki to try to get her to leave. But, Vikki was not ready to make that sort of leap. Then one day, Vikki was playing basketball with her friends when she jumped up and somehow managed to tear her Achilles tendon. She had not realized just how bad the damage was until she drove to the hospital where they immediately performed surgery to repair the damage. It took months before she was able to walk again. She told me that she remembered sitting in the hospital right after the injury happened and looking at her life. She looked at the going to and from work, the meetings and shopping for food at night because that was the only time that she had and she decided that she had had enough. Furthermore, she had broken up a few months ago with her boyfriend of several years and she was yearning to exercise a bit of independence. Vikki ended the term at school, sold her house in Essex and flew to New Zealand where she bought a car and has been traveling ever since. She has been traveling from place to place ever since and enjoying herself immensely.
After breakfast, Vikki headed out to the beach with friends and I decided to wander into town to find the information office to see what there was to do. Nelson is a sprawling town with rapidly growing suburbs. The city itself is divided by unpopulated hills which reach into the populated areas like fingers and separate the downtown from the beaches. The downtown area is nice with low buildings and palm tree-lined streets populated with little stores, restaurants and cafes. However, the Vikki reported that the bar area was a bit skanky. The downtown area is dominated by the Anglican cathedral which was built in 1924 and modified several times since. The city is also home to the World of Wearable Arts which showcases art that can be worn as clothing.
I set out for the surrounding hills and hiked up to a summit where a metal sculpture marks the geographic center of New Zealand. I was instructed by the manger of the hostel that I had to take a picture of my feet, one on each side of the marker if I were to achieve the real Kiwi experience. On the hill, I ran into Lexis and Totte who were a really nice couple from Malmö, Sweden (located across the Øresund from Copenhagen). Lexis is originally from the Philippines and her family has recently moved to Auckland. She and Totte had come to tour around the country and hoped to later find jobs so that they could immigrate from Sweden. I don’t know why they would want to leave the dark, rainy winters of Malmö, Sweden or the gorgeous summers of NZ. They were currently traveling through NZ as part of the Kiwi Experience which is a package transportation deal. They got stuck in Nelson because it is one of the only cities that you need bus reservations to leave and so they were making the best of their day.
I continued to hike through the hills, but it was not as good as the hikes in Abel Tasman would have been. I had to wear a hat and lots of sun block for protection from the rays of the sun. According to the manager of the hostel, in Australia school children are now required to wear hats when they go out to play and those who do not are punished. The hat rule is catching on in NZ as well due to the intense radiation thanks to the hole in the ozone layer in the southern hemisphere. It now takes less than ten minutes of exposure to the sun for a burn to occur and everyone picks up a farmers tan pretty quickly.
After the hike, I returned to the hostel where I had a great swim followed by a shower. I found that I now had two women from the US as roommates as well as a man from the UK who had just brought his motorcycle over on the ferry to Pincton at 4AM to take advantage of the discount in cost and who slept for most of the evening. The women from the US had been in Taupo the week before and they had tried to hike part of the Tongariro Crossing in the rain. They reported that it just was not worth it because the heavy clouds limited visibility to only a few feet. They saw some hikers who were making the trek without heavy gear and they reported that they looked miserable. I called a company in Taupo that runs a shuttle to the Tongariro Crossing and the message I heard reported bad weather and that all tours were canceled for the day. It was not a good sign.
For dinner, I had bought some of the green-lipped muscles which are native to the area. I found plastic containers of precooked and shelled muscles in Woolworths and expected to just bring them back to warm them up without the mess of the shells in the communal kitchen. However, much to my dismay the muscles were pickled in vinegar, much like picked herring. I had bought a lot because I like muscles, but due to the high vinegar content, I could not eat them all which was disappointing.
The morning brought with it rain and cloudy skies. I made some breakfast, bid farewell to everyone and went out front to catch the airport shuttle that I had booked to catch my flight to Taupo. I had opted to fly first to Wellington and then to Taupo on Origin Airline, a domestic airline to save time. Plus, the flight from Nelson to Wellington was $69 and took about 20 minutes whereas the bus and ferry to cover the same distance would have taken five hours and would have cost the same. The flight up to Taupo saved another seven hours over the bus or the train and cost less since I had booked in advance.
On the airport shuttle, I met a family from Canada. There was a mother and her daughter and young son. The daughter had a scarf over her face like robbers in the old westerns and the mother explained that a bug had bitten her on her face and she was having a bad reaction. They were also going to Taupo, but were considering canceling their plans so that they could go to the hospital to see a doctor about the swelling. The daughter said something about the problem and although her voice was muffled, I could have sworn she dropped a f bomb. I was surprised since she looked young behind her scarf, but later I learned that she was actually in her 20’s and living in NZ for a few months on her own.
We arrived at the airport in the rain and discovered that our flight was delayed for over an hour due to the weather. The problem was that our plane was coming from Christchurch and it was delayed there due to fog. I hung out in the airport and noticed that the Canadian family had disappeared. Later on, just as we were about to board our flight, they reappeared. The mother who was visibly relieved told me that they were unable to change their tickets and so they thought that they were not going to be able to go. But, thanks to the delay, the had been able to catch a taxi to the airport where they had been met by a specialist who knew exactly what was wrong with the daughter and was able to prescribe something to reduce the swelling. The mother told me that thanks to the NZ healthcare system, even as guests in the country, the visit to the emergency room and the treatment were all free.
We boarded our little, twin propeller plane and I was amazed that we did not go through a metal detector. When I checked in, I didn’t even have to give an ID to prove who I was. I just told them my name and that I had an eticket and they issued me a boarding pass. I don’t even know if our baggage went through a metal detector. The cockpit door was a screen. The flight to Wellington was uneventful and we arrived with only 30 minutes to wait for our flight to Taupo. The Canadian mother was also amazed at the lack of security as she had been worried about moving their Leathermen to their checked luggage at which point I remember that mine was still in my pocket. Oops.
Wellington is home to Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is where the Return of the King was premiered and the cast spent a lot of time in the city. A large display on the airport building features Gollum and welcomes visitors to Middle Earth. Inside the airport, numerous costumes from the film are on display.
Wellington is an international airport and so I assume that to get to the international flights, passengers would have to go through more screening. What was also odd was that the airport tower was located near the airport, but in a residential neighborhood with houses all around.
We boarded our flight to Taupo which was another twin prop plane and settled back for an uneventful flight.
I assume that you have seen the common story which I was told by some of the people that I have met as to why they came to New Zealand to travel. New Zealand, Australia and SE Asia are most certainly the destinations of choice for people who have tired of their life and have decided to travel for a year. Are these truly adventurous people or are they tormented souls on the run? Whatever their reason for their decision to quit their jobs, to sell their possessions and to travel, one can not deny the courage that it must have taken and the strength of will to live out of a backpack for a year. Eventually they will face the question of what to do next. I wonder what will happen when they try to go back.
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