Wellington Botanic Garden – Day 252

So today we’re going to explore Wellington’s version of Central Park.

This morning we’re waking up at Nomads Wellington it’s pretty awesome hostel because there’s make your own pancake for free every morning
and it’s only about a 10 minute walk fromthe Wellington Gardens which is gonna be our
activity of the day.

The Wellington Botanic Garden is huge it’s over 26 hectares and there’s many different entrances to get to it from the city centre
and there’s even maps to show you all the different things to see and activities around the gardens but for Robin and I we do have a map but we just tend to go where our feet
take us.

The first striking thing about the Wellington Botanic Garden is that aside from the path which are all concrete it looks like beautiful
bush native forest all this kind of things and we are in the city centre of New Zealand’s capital city which is absolutely amazing. Weirdly enough we can’t hear any of the vehicles around and we know there is a lot of busy streets around so I don’t really know how
that works but it feels so peaceful and quiet. The only thing we can hear are the ducks and
oh man there is a lot of them. Every city park needs its token duck pond
and Wellington is no different they have a really cute one here with lots of little streams
running from it there’s even little waterfalls and gentle rapids and there’s a duck pond
feeding bin right next to it so you don’t even need to bring your own food. The duck pond is also surrounded by all this
beautiful native forest, nikau palm trees, lots of ferns it’s just such a beautiful environment
to be it and admittedly, Robin and I spend way too much time watching these ducks I feel
like we’re kids again and we’re just totally mesmerised by watching all these ducks sort
of feeding themselves, and washing themselves, fighting each other it’s really awesome.

Alright so we’re gonna be leaving the ducks
behind and keep on exploring the Wellington Botanic Garden. Although we don’t really follow
the map there is one dot on the map that I just can’t miss it’s the waterfall. there’s
no park, recreational reserve or national park that doesn’t feature a waterfall in New
Zealand. So we can’t miss this one. It’s a really small one but super picturesque. After that we move onto the fragrant garden
which features heaps of plants that have a really nice smell. It’s quite amazing the
variety of them.

So apparently there’s a tree house with a
lift. Which sounds counter productive but let’s give it a shot.

Basically the tree house is actually the visitor
centre of the Wellington Botanic Garden. It’s pretty cool. From the top we can see a really
different view of the canopy and we can see how central the Botanic Garden is because
it’s surrounded by tonne of houses from Wellingtonians living nearby.

As we climb higher and higher up the Wellington
Botanic Garden, we discover the Cable Car Museum of Wellington’s historic cable car
which has been running for over 100 years and it’s the only public running cable car
still going in New Zealand today.

So at the top of the Cable Car is the Cable
Car Museum which is free entry and it goes through the evolution of Wellington’s cable
cars throughout the years starting with some pretty precarious designs where passengers
sat on the outside of the cable car.

This is cosy to say the least. I definitely prefer the newer designs of the
cable cars. There’s no way you would have me hanging off the side of cable car rising
up over the top of Wellington city.

How they came up with the new cable car for
Wellington.

The Wellington Cable Car Museum also features
some really quaint items of the everyday life of Wellingtontonians back in the day. There
is also the huge machinery that helps operating the cable car which is full on display. It’s
quite cool and there is also some luxurious cable cars.

But we don’t hang out in the Cable Car Museum
for too long because the Botanic Gardens have just so much to offer so we are quickly back
on the track exploring the area and checking out the wildlife.

And this time we have to use the map because
we need to get back to our hostel and to do so we need to find our way back where we started
so we are taking the Pukatea Track which is gonna take us all the way from the Wellington
Cable Car to where we started.

Welcome to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital
city. What do you think about it? It’s pretty cool, right?

Seriously guys the Wellington Botanic Garden
is definitely one of the best free things to do in Wellington.

So we’re both pretty excited. We had a blast
and we’re back to Nomads Backpackers for the evening before tomorrow heading on the road
again toward our next destination which is gonna be true wilderness. We’ll leave you
with that.

You heard recently cicadas are everywhere
even right here where I’m talking to you the only thing I can hear now is cicadas like
[accurate cicada noise].