Pækākāriki and Upper Hutt

A day of rest, icing, and Voltarin seemed to have been just the thing for my ankle. After a bit of strapping to keep it secure, I was able to regain much of my mobility. So it was another day exploring the rail lines of Greater Wellington.

The first stop was at Pækākāriki, on the Kāpiti Line. For any gunzel out there, this is probably the more interesting one, with its 7 tunnels, one of the 1 km long, followed shortly by another around 4 km long. The well known walking trail here is the Escarpment Trail, but that was out because I didn’t want to risk my ankle. So I got off the train and simply walked beside the beach until I reach Queen Elisabeth Park. I spent around an hour doing a short walk around the trails there. Lots of Norfolk Pines, more than I’ve seen in any natural setting. There was a few hills here and there, but much of it was pretty level and relatively easy to do. Got some lovely views of the hills and Kapiti Island.

After that, it was a small walk through Pækākāriki, back towards town for a quick lunch and back to the station for the trip back.

I got to Wellington station a bit before 2:00, which meant I had some time to travel to Upper Hutt, on the Hutt Valley Line. I had no real plan of what I’d do there, and the day was getting on so I knew there wasn’t much time to do anything significant. It was just an excuse to see it, and visit one more train line.

Oh, and I discovered that you can’t really transfer between lines with Wellington’s ticketing system. If you need to take a train from Pækākāriki to Upper Hutt, you’ll need to tag off when you reach Wellington, and then tag on again. The ticket inspector made that quite clear. 🫣

Upper Hutt was pretty suburban. I believe there were some nearby trail-heads but there was no time to explore them, so I simply walked around the park. And, well, let me say this: in my experience visiting New Zealand, it’s sometimes easy to forget that I’m in a different country. You see many of the same sights as you do back home, and the environs will need to be dramatically different to remind you of this (there’s no mistaking where you are in, say, Queenstown). Well, Upper Hutt wasn’t helping here as the local park had magpies, eastern rosellas, and eucalyptus trees.

Anyway, I finished my lap and took the train back to Wellington, arriving at around 5:00, true peak hour for everyone coming home from work (they were going the other way). After that, it was simply dinner (chicken pho — I had a craving for it) and now it’s writing this post.

So this ends my (second) visit to Wellington. It’s been fun, and I hope to remember more of it that I did my first. Coming up will be phase two of my holiday: a week-long drive to Auckland. More of this to come.