Wellington Retail Experience and South Island Expedition.
Well – it had to happen! The escorts Thornton were tasked to provide sherpa and mobile wallet facilities to the now, fully rehabilitated fire-breathing Home Leader! High Street stores, Boutiques, where nothing has price tags but there are strategically placed sofas – presumably to rejuvenate shoppers when they find out the cost of their purchase were visited with alarming regularity.
I could go into detail of the experience, the number of shops entered together with the ratio of purchases to things tried on but even my statistical interest wanes at this point.
Suffice to say we eventually retired [exhausted] to a wonderful Cajun/Deep South-type café/bar for a combination of solid and liquid sustenance just opposite to the cinema where the world première of The Lord Of The Rings took place – which was also at the foot of a hill that was used to film some of the middle earth sequences.
The next stage of the tour was something much more interesting. An Interislander ferry crossing from Wellington to Picton began the all-too-brief South Island experience – death by spectacular scenery! I did have a few ‘Kodak’ moments, but I doubt even David Bailey could do the scenery justice!
A two-hour drive was the first leg to Kaikoura – the whale-watching capital of New Zealand. Along the way, we passed a long stretch of coast where, no more more than 100 yards out to sea, was a large pod of whales – Orcas we think – splashing around, minding their own business, oblivious no doubt to anything else around them.
Did we stop the car and take the inevitable ‘Kodak moment’? Did we not! ……….. We’re in the land of whale-watching so there would be plenty of opportunity over the next couple of days to do that …………. or so we thought!
We passed up on the opportunity to go out on little boats chasing the little buggers, we might have a budding cox in the group but there was a limit to the proximity this writer wanted to get to an over-amorous Orca! Instead we visited another stretch of coastline where whales and dolphins were aplenty! How better to watch Orcas and dolphins at play than to be on dry land with a nice drink of something and a rather pleasant cigar?
Wrong again!
When we got to one bay-side watering hole mien hostess remarked on how spectacular the view had been a short while earlier – but nothing – not even a hint. The rest of the trip was similarly fruitless. Nevertheless, we could not have gone all of the way to New Zealand without spending some time in the South Island.
We stayed in the winner of the South Island’s “Best Irish Hotel of 2005, 2006 & 2007” – Donegal House. We did strive hard to find any of the other competitors, but that shouldn’t diminish the image of the place – it was excellent. The l’eau de liffy had not travelled particularly well, but at least it was cold, black and wet! There was also the spectacular vision of a peacock doing everything he possibly could to entice the peahen into a spot of rumpy-pumpy but she was having none of it! The number of times he strutted his stuff, fanned his tail feathers and made all sort of gutteral noises without success! I almost felt like throwing him some paracetamol to see if they would work!
We also went to a little town called Cheviot – it was closed!
Then it was back to Wellington for our last couple of days before the return leg of the tour begins. After our previous Melbourne experience, we have the requisite ETAs and trust our stay there this time is a bit more productive.
This is the Owld Phartz just about ready to sign off from New Zealand – we will of course try to update the tour records at our stop-offs in Melbourne, Singapore and Dubai.
Until then …………
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