“New Zealand is as close as we will get to life on another planet.”

May 21

As American Pulitzer Prize winning scientist, historian, and author Jared Diamond said, this place is other worldly! We have felt what he observed many times over throughout our time in this great country.

Today, we spent the morning at Te Papa. What an extraordinary museum, this “container of treasures” (Māori translation).

Located steps away from our flat in Wellington, we spent several hours on this rainy day exploring NZ’s largest museum.

The exhibits were all excellent and informative. The Gallipoli exhibit told the story of eight New Zealanders who fought against the Turks in WWI. The craftsmanship from Weta workshop who created the 2.5 times life sized soldiers was impressive.

Other interesting exhibits included Māori history and artifacts, the world’s only complete specimen of a preserved Colossal squid (992 lbs) and the geological power of how NZ was created.

Volcano simulation in NZ

The Māori exhibition included original preserved wakas, carvings, a store house and a marae (meeting house).

Te Papa was definitely one of the best museums we’ve ever been to and we could’ve easily spent more time there.

Apache was our final meal in NZ and it was an amazing, flavorful send off. Vietnamese and French cuisine was perfectly blended into one delicious lunch.

We polished off seared tuna with pear and cucumber, grilled King salmon rice parcels, roasted pumpkin and vegetable dumplings and coconut rice with grilled chicken and prawns. So yummy!

After lunch we walked around the city in the rain and I bought a cookbook recommended by our NZ friends called Salad, from Two Raw Sisters, to add to my collection at home.

We also checked off another coffee shop from our list. This one is called Hangar and is known for its coffee flights. It roasts a variety of single origin and blended beans in house. The place was buzzing with high energy.

We stayed to watch them brew a flight for another customer and took ours to go. We had the Bomber flat white. No coffee flight for us. Too much coffee in one go. We’ll need to come back and try it though on our next trip to NZ. The coffee was equally as fantastic as Swimsuit. We have one more morning left to try another coffee shop.