Overnight the storm subsided and, as we entered the Cook Strait, all was calm. We arrived at Wellington, NZ’s capital and smallest in the world sited within a volcanic caldera with many bays formed by differential erosion. Houses have been upon the less steep slopes of the crater but partially hidden by the dense forest.
As we awaited the opening of the ship for walks around the town we saw a continuous delivery of timber by road from the east which was stock piled at the port and loaded onto a Panamanian freighter. Our morning walk took us along the waterfront. This was interesting as we walked past the rejuvenated wharves of the former port which had preserved the past but re-used, as are the abundant Art Deco hotels and offices.
The city centre, just 500m from the sea was a step back to the 1950s, with some of the buildings reminiscent of a UK seaside town. It was hard to appreciate that one was in a capital city because it was so quiet, quaint and had no vibe.
Once back on the waterfront there was evidence of connections with the UK such as Queens Wharf, where arrivals from the UK and other countries disembarked, mobile dock cranes built by a Bath based company and the oldest floating crane built in Glasgow 100 years ago which came to Wellington under its own steam in 82 days via the Panama Canal.
We departed during dinner and as we left we saw numerous spatter cones, fumaroles and evidence of the injection of magma into the rocks before e the collapse of the giant volcano. There is also evidence of erosion during the last Ice Age (many Europeans forget that the Ice Age happened down under also). Ice filled and covered a lot of the area, smoothed the slopes, deepened the crater and upon melting left behind a U-shaped chasm and small strandflat beach. As the sun set, we turned west into the Cook Strait and onwards to South Island.
