Wellington | NZ 1/16

Wellington

Am gonna say this again and again in the all New Zealand posts here..

Driving in New Zealand is an experience of a lifetime..

Am being forced by myself to complete the previous sentence with “Until you face a speed ticket”. Anyhow thats the truth.

New Zealand was on the ‘list’ for a long time, I should say. They have stringent visa regulations and generally ask to apply well in advance (3 months).

I did apply in December (2010) along with all of my documents I could collect. Luckily our visa was approved in 10 days.

Well, I lived next 50 days by breathing New Zealand. In between had the new year trip in India. Except that period, NZ was filling every second of my thoughts.

Zealandia (geographical name), got separated from Australia about 25 million years. This unique sleek country has two islands called north and south islands and have 1000 differences with each other. However tourists flock to south island which much more beautiful than the northern one. We had plans to spend 2 days in north island and 9 other days for South island.

After extensive planning, they day came. 19th Jan 2011. We were promptly denied boarding in the Qantas flight. Added to New Zealand visa, they were expecting a Australian transit visa as we had 2 hours of transit at brisbane. My head was spinning right there. First, couldn’t digest my extensive plan had a flaw. Second, couldn’t accept that transit visa policy. Whatever things I could list, that was a blow even before the start. I wish the internet booking of Qantas gave a note about this transit visa. While my ego-part of my brain sent continuous demotivating signals to the other parts, analytical part offered few other options. Singapore airlines has a direct flight to Auckland from Singapore. Upon checking, they offered tickets at a price, I wouldn’t want to buy. After little time, I realized we cannot fly that night. We went back to home and looked for alternative flights to Auckland without a transit at Australia. After a good search, found Thai airways has flights to Auckland via Bangkok which costed even lesser than Qantas one which I booked 3 months ago. Am flying next day, still the cost of the ticket is at the lowest rate. We booked the ticket and I quickly skipped the entire north island as we lost a day with this chaos. That was hard, but no damage to the rest of the plan.

20 Jan 2011

Thai airways flight was on time and everything went smooth. Reached Bangkok at their noon time. We had that peculiarly designed Swarnabhoomi airport for the rest of the day. Next leg of flight to Auckland was 8ish in the evening. We roamed here and there and tried the airport “Chang Spa”. Nothing to write about it honestly.

It was quite surprising to see that our Auckland flight (from Bangkok) was filled with 80% of Indians. On a 747 flight, that accounts to 300+ Indians. They were all from North India. New Zealand has around 5.4 million population and one fifth of them stay at Auckland. For that numbers, having a flight full of Indians, clearly indicated the immigration of our Indians. I was glad as these immigrations are not like the 60% Indian population in Arab Emirates. These people have their business, restaurants in New Zealand.

We landed in Auckland after 12 hours of flight. Yes! Thats a 9565 Kms of sheer tiredness. I watched couple of movies with a very bad earphones supplied. Am not whining!.. 😛 Again, Immigration tested our patience. There were very long queues. After answering few questions (questions with a pronunciation of “e” as “e” itself in words.. Try “Ten”). When I thought it was over after collecting our luggage, a dog at work (they work at immigration), sniffed Thenmozhi’s hand bag. She had some fruits earlier and I somehow persuaded her to dump it. They have the policy of either dump whatever stuff you can eat, any sort of plants, any sort of meats or declare. Seems even after dumping those fruits, bag had the smell of it. In fact when the dog was coming near to her, she was wanting and waiting that bag to be sniffed. When asked about that, she said, she just wanted to check if that dog sniffs that or not. What a timing to check isn’t it!

Another round of interview was conducted related to the things we carry. I declared roasted almonds and promised that we carry nothing else with a doubtful eye on her. She is a saver. No matter what.

When we landed it was around 1:30 in the afternoon and these immigration processes took a good 2 hours. Plan was to catch the flight to Wellington which takes around an hour and call it a day.

We did. Domestic terminal can be either walked in 10 mins or reached by the free shuttle which departs every 15 mins. We opted for a gentle walk to get rid of 12 hour bumming. Using Air New Zealand flights are fun. You scan the ticket, choose the seat, change the flight if you are eligible, print luggage stickers, ticket, all by yourself and drop the luggage at the belt. Thats all, go to the gate and board the flight. Quite new, for their population, its the best thing to automate. I compared with India and wondered, how many people would have been involved till that boarding pass stage.

In no time, we reached wellington. Met a lovely person who worked for the govt conservatory dept and looked almost like Benicio Del Toro. He was kind and talked about NZ and the wind out there. We took a corporate cab (which we shouldn’t have – as its over charging) and reached ibis hotel. Quickly checked in and got our GPS parcel which I had ordered through gpsrentals.co.nz. Allan – was such a nice person to quickly change the destination to Wellington which I was suppose to pick from Taupo on that day.

As per the actual plan, we were suppose to fly to Rotorua a thermally active lands right at the center of north island. We should have visited Poolynesian Spa, waimangu, wai-o-tapu and should have try huka falls jet, and should have sky dived!. All went in vein. 🙁

New Zealand enjoys the long sunny hours which means the sunset would be mostly at 9pm. Having 3 more hours for the sunset, we quickly wanted to check what wellington has for us. Almost everything was closed. Despite the fact that, thats the capital (yes – not Auckland!!), its a very sleepy town by all means.

Still the tram (which is exactly similar to the Hong Kong tram to Victoria Peak) runs till the sunset that goes to the Botanic garden which oversees the town and harbor from a good height. We refreshed ourselves and walked couple of blocks. We bought tickets and went to the top which was quite nice experience. At the top, it was totally deserted and the wind tried to freeze us. We opted for some short trails as the longer ones are too much to walk. We went all the way to rose garden, a small garden full of roses. I would say it would be rare to see that kind of human-free parks anywhere else.

After sometime, we returned to the base and found a Malay style restaurant which served finest roti curry and nasi goreng (fried rice). Note, New Zealand is full of fine dining restaurants. Except KFCs, McDonalds, cost of eating is quite high..But worth every penny!. 😉

By the time we finished, entire town went into a deep sleep (or I can say hibernation).

Download Wellington slides here.