Virgin Blue

By the way, the pilot on the flight back tried the trick with the air vents. I ignored him. You don’t get ME twice, Virgin Blue.

Te Papa Museum

We had time before heading for the airport to visit the Te Papa museum – which has got to be the best museum I have ever been to. Entry’s free, and there are about five levels with some awesome exhibits and displays. We wandered through Bush City finding out about plants, animals and their habitats, before checking out an interactive earthquake machine, an exhibition about relations between settlers and Maoris, and a video on some of the settlers who had made New Zealand their home. Whether or not you think you are a museum person, I would recommend that if you’re only in Wellington for one day, you check out this place.

Vomit

The trip back to Wullington was uneventful, although some unsuspecting Kiwi suit emerged from the toilet cubicle at the Shell garage to find me puking my ring into the basin – the expected hangover having by now kicked in. I would obviously rather have vomited in the toilet, but as he was in there, what option did I have? He didn’t seem to see it that way and got rather arsey about having to wash his hands where I had just vomited, despite my pointing out that I’d done my best to wash the worst of it away.

Monday

Still no hangover, though I could feel one nudging at the fringes of my perception. John’s breakfast was again adequate but unremarkable, and his cleaner, Mary, appeared on the scene. As we were about to leave, he mentioned his wife, Karin. Where was this mysterious Karin, we wondered, and did she know about Jenny and Mary? Was John a secret bigamist, and was Martinborough a hotbed of salacious steamy sin? We’ll never know. What’s more, we hadn’t been to any of the vineyards which constitute Martinborough’s raisin d’etre (sorry). And it’s too late now, though I’m sure they’re great, and we did try some local wine at Est – which was very good.

Sunday

Again – no hangover to speak of. John put on a reasonable breakfast, and then Jacq started up the automobile and we hit the road, bound for Greytown. If you have been to Berry or Leura in New South Wales, Greytown is very similar. There are lots of craft shops and coffee shops, and a large, stately-looking hotel with overpriced drinks, but fantastic original wooden interiors designed in sympathy with the elegant glamour of the exterior. Over a couple of mineral waters, we asked the waiter where we could go on a walk, and he sent out the commis chef, who suggested what sounded like ‘Mount Dick.’ Resisting the temptation to tell him that’s what we’d been trying to do all weekend, we noted down his advice and headed out of town to the Waiohine Gorge. The road was long, with many a winding turn, not to mention lots of gravel and occasional sheer drops, but we found our way to the swing bridge, the longest of its type in New Zealand, which stretched over a ravine. Okay, a heavily wooded valley with a river running through it. On the other side was a path which wound up into the mountains – and up, and up, and up… After about half an hour we got bored of the geography and turned and went down and down and down. We headed back to Greytown and had a fantastic dinner in Pipi café, a very funky place with a very chilled atmosphere. It may be a well-worn cliché, but it really did feel like we were eating in someone’s house.

Wife swapping in Martinborough

Next stop – hiring a car with the help of the very friendly woman at the Sharella Motor Inn, then full steam ahead to Martinborough. The sleepy wine-country town of Martinborough exists for one reason only, it seems: so its townsfolk and visitors can get pissed. Or so you might be led to believe if you listened to Tania in the Tourist Information centre. “No one drives here,” she beamed. “We all drink.”

She managed to stay sober long enough to find us a place for $150 a night just round the corner: Beatsons http://www.beatsons.co.nz/.

A word with the owner and we knocked him down even further. It was lovely little place, we had our own cottage with a log fire – which was a good job as it was bloody freezing. The owner, John, was lovely and chatty. When we came back, he had been joined by a mysterious and taciturn woman, Jenny, who we assumed was his wife or perhaps his housekeeper.

There isn’t much to do in Martinborough, so I imagine quite a lot of the townsfolks’ time is taken up having sex with other people’s partners, or at least pretending to have done so and precipitating gossip about it. Or maybe they have better things to do than indulge in idle chit-chat about other people’s love lives. We certainly didn’t. So after trying to work out the relationship between John and Jenny and watching ‘The Next Top Model’ while enjoying the heater, we ventured out onto the streets – or should I say street – of Martinborough for a Saturday night on the town.

I imagine that on a hot summer night in the middle of the tourist season, the Martinborough Hotel would be packed and buzzing. On this particular freezing cold Saturday night, there were a few people in there watching South Africa against the All Blacks, but none of them appeared to be single men and thus of any interest to us, so we had a quick drink then headed across the road to Est to eat. Est is a Mod Oz-type (Mod Kiwi?) restaurant with great décor – an open fire, original artwork on the wall, and a frosted glass bar dividing the two main spaces. The staff were friendly and attentive and the food excellent, and although certainly not cheap, good value for money. Email them on est@ihug.co.nz . The Martinborough Hotel was almost deserted when we emerged with full bellies, so we wandered round looking for random house parties to crash, but obviously the good folk of Martinborough were too busy wife-swapping to oblige. Home to bed.

Wellington Cable Car

The best bit of the gardens is the cable car, which runs down to the city centre. It costs next to nothing and it stops at other stations on the way, including Wellington University – must be a novel way to get to lectures. You have to wonder what kind of stupid pranks Kiwi freshers get up to on this unconventional mode of transport; I imagine the slopes of the cable car are no stranger to the trickle of urine.

Saturday

Up and out, mercifully without a hangover, and ready for a stroll through the Botanical Gardens, which and cover of series of hills, with specialist gardens like a scented garden, a duck pond, and a great kids’ playground with a mini-deathslide (aka flying fox).

Opium Den

Done out in deep red with the look of a Vietnamese opium den, the club has lashings of atmosphere, and a rather ambiguous identity. We ordered food, Indian, which was patchy and in some places actually raw – the pakora was inedible. Still, the ambience compensated and we enjoyed a couple of long cocktails before heading out for Matterhorn, apparently a legend in Wullington. No idea why – it was nothing to write home about. We didn’t hang about long, instead moseying over to Motel, a place so exclusive they once turned away Liv Tyler. Obviously those days of exclusivity, and, let’s be frank, mind-boggling stupidity have gone, because they let us in and god knows we have been chucked out of enough places before. Maybe Liv still had her pixie ears on at the time and they mistook her for a Tasmanian. Motel is a great bar; lush retro décor with a big fat Buddha greeting you, then carved, cut-out screens separating the main area, with plush, kitsch soft furnishing throughout. It doesn’t lend itself to dancing, and the only person to engage us in conversation was a bloke who showed us some magic tricks and then offered to take us skiing in his BMW. We were nodding into our G&Ts by this stage so back to the Sharella – and, ooh, those electric blankets!

Wellington Botanical Gardens

Anyway, the shuttle bus wound through wide streets of white-painted timber houses with picket fenced perched on top of leafy hillsides, then through a modern town of warehouses, car showrooms, theatres and pubs. Our destination was the Sharella Motor Inn, which I had booked through Hotelclub.com. The Sharella is a shocking-looking shit-heap in a great location, and for the price, great facilities. I wouldn’t recommend it for a romantic weekend unless the object of your affections is Alan Partridge, but it suited us fine. There’s a great view over the bay and mountains from our window, and it’s located directly opposite the Botanical Gardens.

After a short relax and television break, we tarted ourselves up and ventured into the city centre. We went for the taxi option; they seem to be cheaper than in Sydney. Our destination was Cuba Street which is where we were expecting to find lots of cool hangouts, but we didn’t see anything really amazing, so had a word with a tough-looking bouncer who pointed us to an uninspiring passage in Cuba Mall. We didn’t hold out much hope as we wandered down the steps, but we were in for a pleasant surprise – we’d been fortunate enough to stumble into the Good Luck Club, a little-known secret to which only a select few Wellingtonians are privy. Or so I like to think.

Local Hospitality

One of the things I’ve noticed is how different NZ is from Oz in terms of the locals – and by that I mean the original locals rather than the settlers. Almost straightaway, I noticed Maoris working alongside settlers in ‘normal’ jobs, something you very rarely see in Sydney. There’s also an evident pride in Maori language and culture, amongst all New Zealanders – again, something decidedly absent from mainstream Aussie culture. You’re lucky to see an Aboriginal in a crowd scene in an Aussie ad, and as for the language, I once asked an Aussie girl why they didn’t learn Aboriginal languages at school. “Do they have a language?” she asked without a trace of irony.

Wullington Eerport

When we got to Wellington airport (or ‘Wullingtun Eerport’ as the locals insisted on calling it), we invested in some duty free: a bottle of Jim Beam and one of Absolut for NZ$49, which is about £12. After all, we’re hard-working girls with hard-working livers, and this was going to be a holiday involving plenty of hard drinking. The bourbon leaked all over me, meaning I walked through Customs stinking like Olly Reed after a quiet night in. Not only that, but Jimmy the beagle sniffed out my oranges in the queue and I had to make the walk of shame – or rather, stupidity – through the ‘Dangerous Fruit Smugglers’ aisle of customs.

Once we had made our way to the other side of customs, Jacq went to change some Aussie dollars into Kiwi dollars. Just as she approached the exchange booth, the announcer bellowed, “Will Kerri Tyler please go to Information?” Wondering what might happen now and whether Jimmy the beagle had dobbed me in for the packet of Juicy Fruit in my inside pocket, I made my way to Information. Turned out all I’d done was leave my passport at Customs, but that was enough to embarrass Jacq and send her scuttling for the exit.

Wullington is a small airport, and getting a shuttle bus into town was easy enough and cost NZ$18.

Friday

If any readers have travelled with Virgin, you’ll be aware of the fact that, unlike most airlines who employ people based on customer service and pleasantness of demeanour, Virgin break with convention and select their staff from the local stand-up comedian community. This made for a delightful three-hour flight as our steward Bernie honed his crowd-pleasing skills on his captive audience. At one point, he asked passengers to reach up and point their air conditioning vents to the back of the plane ‘for technical reasons’ (“We should get to our destination a few minutes earlier!” quipped the master of comic timing as three quarters of the passengers dumbly obeyed).

Jacq told me just before I left my house that Virgin didn’t serve food on the flight. A notorious glutton, I threw a couple of oranges into my bag, not realising you could actually BUY food on board. How I wish I hadn’t bothered.

Off to Welllington

My mate Jacqueline and I, hard-working Pommie lasses in glorious exile in the Best City in the World were looking for a cheap and easy three day getaway, and Pacific Blue came up trumps, with a return flight to Wellington for A$256 odd – less than you might pay to fly one-way from Sydney to Brisbane http://www.virginblue.com.au/