Changing Scenes

Today we travelled from Masterton to Wellington, normally taking about 90mins but today it took a bit longer.

The day was beautiful with the odd drift of snow coming through. The Rimutaka Hill road was closed from snow, so it was to be the long way out of Waiararapa - we had a plane to catch in Wellington later on in the day.

Fifteen minutes out of Masterton we hit our first road closure where we waited 30mins for clearance to be given for Mount Bruce, then we were on our way, sweeping through farmland blanketed in white snow heading towards the Pahiatua Track which would lead us over yesterday's Tararua Range, passing wind turbines and waiting at another road closure before climbing again. Down the other side we were heading towards the west coast of the lower North Island, glistening in white and just bypassing the small township of Levin.

With a little time to spare we were able to visit Waikanae Beach, which outlooks onto Kapiti Island, one of New Zealand's most important sites for bird recovery and major breeding site for sea birds. The wind was bitter and the beach was empty, behind me the hills were patchy with snow. I could see the top of the South Island, a very faint blue just left of Kapiti Island, probably best viewed in large.

We continued onto Wellington where the weather changed drastically, blue sky became grey with downpours of rain. We met with Daughter A for a quick 5 mins and then headed to the airport. Unfortunately 5 mins before boarding a heavy downpour of sleet closed the runway for an hour and then our bags were being unloaded from the plane, yes we were staying the night in Wellington.