Wellington to Auckland via Lake Taupo

Sunday 25Oct, 2009
This is the North Island of New Zealand. The road trip from Wellington to Auckland, as per Google Maps, was 649km and around 9hours long. We followed State Highway 1 the entire trip. Although its a state highway – you don’t travel awfully quickly. Speed limit is 100kmph, but this is often interrupted with 50kmph sections as you go through towns. These photographs are taken through the car window at the various speeds as dictated by the traffic regulations.
	About 30minutes outside of Wellington, just outside the town of Porirua, on the way to Kapiti Coast – fantastic sea views around each corner.
	And then the first of many similar views - green hills and sheep. Beautiful countryside and fresh fresh air.
	Mountains everywhere
	Into the town of Paraparumu
	A State Highway with traffic circles! The state highway also allows pedestrians, cyclists, dog walkers etc. The mix of small town charm and big city technology is one of the unique things NZ has to offer.
	Otaki beach is just a few hundred metres to the left of the highway.
	Farmhouse
	Liked the colours of this car yard.
	Fruit and veg stand – lots and lots of these along the way. In season at the moment strawberries and asparagus.
	The town of Levin
	In the town of Levin is the Swazi shop. This sells outdoor clothing – really fantastic outdoor clothing for anything from hot tropical hikes to ice climbing.
	More nice colours in Levin
	The town of Foxton. They have a bus museum! Not sure how much fun that would be for me, but for some perhaps this holds lots of memories. Also features a doll gallery, a dutch windmill, a tram and a flax stripper.
So this is where we are at now ... Wellington at point A and we are at Foxton, at the arrow.
	Diary – at least one in every small town. Beyond the staples of milk and chocolate you will find fruit and veg and often postage stamps, top ups for calling cards, prepaid cards and bus cards.
	Taupo is now 265km away ..... when we started it was about 360km away Taupo marks past half way to Auckland.
	Streaking past fences and open green pastures
	Old house with roof falling apart – looks perfect for a haunted house.
	Sheep grazing
	Market at Carnarvon
	Houses painted colourfully
	50km per hour on the state highway!
	And we enter the town of Bulls, incredibull place, knowledgeabull (school), reliabull, etc. For real. This town lives its name and its logo.For laughs look here: http://unforgetabull.co.nz/ And incidentally it’s the town where McDonalds gets most of its beef for their shops in NZ.
	217 to Taupo...
	This field had hundreds of cows.
	My estimate on the spread of animals seen on the trip. This is what an alpaca looks like if you’ve never met one before:
	It started to rain a few minutes outside of Bulls. This was the only bit of rain for whole trip, only lasted about 10 minutes.
	Fields of yellow flowers, perhaps canola oil plants?
	Entering the town of Hunterville.
	Ongoing green hills and sheep
	We saw the tail end of this cycle race with cyclists coming up the road in the opposite direction to us.
	Court house and settlers museum in one building?
	I do like the name of the antique shop – Donkey Bray!
	Spectacular red blossoms
	Small town Mangaweka.
	Look for the white aeroplane in the background of this photo. There are signs along the road stating that this is an international airport. Still l not sure if this is for real or a joke. Last time we came by here the aeroplane was pained mostly bright red and yellow with the colours of Cookie Time featuring the cookie monster logo.
	Less than 200km to Taupo!
	Beautiful place this!
	Clouds for Karin
	Small village of houses along the hillside.
	Brown Sugar Cafe and Sports Bar in one.
	The Boot from Taihape
	On the top of the ridge are trees an apricot colour. This is the natural colour of the leaves not a remnant of winter. Later in the journey we saw orange and red and maroon leaf’d trees.
	Mt Ruapehu, with the ski slopes Phakapapa and Turoa that we had been to earlier this year. About 3 hours into the journey now.
	Sunday was a great day for skiing and boarding we found out a few days later.
	National Park could be accessed off SH1. This is the town we have stayed in a couple of times when visiting Mt. Ruapehu.
	Motel and Liquor store right alongside ... makes sense right?
	And then in a blink of an eye the landscape changed! This is Dessert Road. The freakiest thing – from green lush slopes to brown scrub land.
	A stretch of sand
	Then some scrub
	And a basin of white sand
	And then all of a sudden a pine plantation and back to the NZ greenery
	Town of Turangi.
	Wooo hooo – 50km to Taupo
	There is a little coffee shop on the left that went by too fast for me – loved the setting out of tables and chairs in the middle of the road to capture as much sun as possible. And pretty pink blossom trees!
	River Waikato. Really enormous.
	Really small town – Motuoapa - so small that you only need to slow to 70 and it was by in a flash.
	Another small town – Orwatua – which has a big trout fishing focus.
	And there it was Lake Taupo!!!! It’s not the sea, it really is a lake.
	Lake to the left...
	... and to the front..
	...and to the right
Check the scale on bottom left of map to see how massive the lake is...
	Ryan the best driver in the world!

Frenzied Friday – Nicolini’s and Footnote

9 October

It was raining and windy as can be, one of those awesome Wellington winds that gust up from nowhere, blows unsuspecting tourists’ umbrellas inside out, and smacks you full on in the face. But the weather does not determine how much fun you can have on a Friday night!

We started with a supper at Nicolini’s. This is an Italian restaurant that we had tried to get into before but the wait was for over an hour. Tonight was our lucky night, and with being early we were able to get a table. We had selections from the mains specials. Linguine Pescatore included mussels, clams, squid and prawns in a gloriously garlicy tomato sauce. A smoked salmon risotto with unexpected but welcome pine nuts and cheese was super rich. As much as the pasta was good I wish I had opted for  a smaller dish so that I could do justice to the desserts. Ryan went for Tiramisu – and this was the real deal. None of that stodgy cheesecakey type stuff that generally gets passed off as tiramisu. I went for profiteroles and just could not finish the portion. Yum yum yum.

From there a short walk in the rain (that comes at you horizontally) to Circa Theatre. The performance of Footnote Dance Company’s “Footnote Forte” was to begin here. Footnote is NZ’s contemporary dance company and this production was a set of six solos. Four of these were to be performed at the theatre. A fifth at Museum Hotel a little way down the road and the final dance at Hooch Bar in Courtenay Place a few blocks down. The concept was superb – theatrical production, walking around the city to new places, dance in different settings, a fabulous little adventure.

The first dance was performed by Francis Christeller. This was set to a series of classical music with operatic pieces. The dancer sang a bit too which worked well within the piece. A really moving if sombre piece. Second was Claire Lissaman who danced to ‘sounds’ (to me this sounded like bits of music that had been stretched or compressed and out of order) and worked through a bit of madness, talking to herself, blowing away imaginary bugs. A really intense piece combining physical with mental emotive states. Then Anita Hunziker who danced a frenetic piece. This girl had some serious energy and stamina. Lots of jumping and falling and rolling and flying. Awe inspiring. Last at the theatre was Jeremy Poi who danced with a wall and paint. The dance involved him pushing a wall prop in a rugby scrum style. During the dance he painted the outline of his torso on the wall, covered his legs in paint and then scraped out tattoo  like patterns.

We then walked along to Museum Hotel. Museum hotel displays contemporary NZ art. It was a treat to be here again even if just to wander through the art. The modern art against the old grandeur of the hotel is such a clever balance. The dance performed was an installation piece by Jesse Wikiriwhi. He danced behind a paper wall with light and images provided solely by a projector. The piece was about imagery. For me it was connecting images from your childhood to adult dreams. It was the fun of motion and image and shadow.

(pics above from various Footnote promotional posters)

Then a walk to Hooch Bar. The name is most unfortunate and does not reflect the style of the bar at all. It’s a classy burlesque themed bar. One of those places that is a door on the street that you have walked passed hundreds of times. Walking up a wooden staircase took us to a view of exposed wood rafters, the beautiful intricate wall paper, solid wood floors, leather covered chairs and vintage lampshades. Sarah Knox performed a dance using a hoop suspended from the ceiling. Very clever dancer to virtually rework her dance on the spot. She was crowded in by the audience and lost probably a metre of space all around her.

What a wonderful night. Wellington rocks!

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years

 

Went to the City Gallery in Wellington yesterday. This gallery has been closed for many months and opened just a few weeks ago with an exhibition of works by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusami. The exterior of the gallery has been covered with dots! Without knowing the artist or what the exhibition contained this made little sense. But I loved the playfulness of it, and that the city of Wellington has spirit enough to update an old building in this way. The dots are stickers – so no damage will be caused to the building.

 

There was a monster queue to get inside. Two reasons for this – the first being that only 200 visitors are permitted in the gallery at one time, giving enough space to allow you to look at the art properly. I do like this. The second – unbeknownst to me, was this was a free entrance day. So in the half hour wait I had plenty of time to contemplate the dots – but no wild epiphanies came to the fore.

In the civic square there are a number of government council buildings, plus the gallery and library. Suspended above the square is a silver ball sculpture featuring the NZ fern symbol.  What caught my eye was the silver urban sculpture on top of a building a little way back.

 

The exhibition was great – humorous and thought provoking and spacey. These pics are from www.yayoi-kusama.jp.

spheres suspended from the ceiling	‘Moment of regeneration’	monster silver/black vinyl covered bubbles on the floor and hanging about
the wall, floors and ceiling painted in black with the orange dots, amorphous balloons floating around. walking into this was like walking into some version of outer space	between the black room and the orange room (coming up) was a maze of convex mirrors	about to enter the orange room	The orange room being the inverse of the black room, including the shape and position of the balloons
The above is a different gallery, but just to give you an idea of the black and white canvases	Each canvas is about 1m x 1.5m. She uses black marker and pens out patterns and repeats of shapes	Lots of line work – the detail is phenomenal.	Apparently she would create a work like this in one sitting – working for 30 or more hours to complete it. I would guess you go into a trance like state with the dots and lines and fluid repeats