Wellywood Backpackers Wellington

Not the happiest moment of the trip for me when the alarm went off at 6.45am, I could have done with quite a few more hours in bed, but sadly we were being picked up by the bus at 8.00am. I reluctantly headed towards the shower and after a hot blast from that I felt slightly more human. I had breakfast and then headed back to the room for some frantic packing, we only just got checked out and down to the bus on time. Then we waited for about ten minutes to wait for a couple of people who had ...

The Adelphi hostel wasn't the party zone that our driver had predicted, in fact there was hardly any noise throughout the night, apart from the door to the hammock area which was just outside our room being slammed shut a few times. We got on the coach after a nervous twenty minutes stood outside of the front of the hostel after the pick up time, where I was convinced that we had missed the bus. As our driver tried to book people into Wellington hostels that evening, we became immediately gla...

Howdy Dowdy All! Well it's been * while since I've s*t down *nd *dded *n entry to my website, but life in Windy Wellington h*s been keeping me busy! At the st*rt of Febru*ry I fin*lly m*de the bre*k *nd left tr*nquil, quiet Kinloch *nd he*ded to Welly in se*rch of work, shopping *nd * soci*l life!!! And it didn't dis*ppoint. On the recommend*tion of * friend, I moved into Wildlife House, * b*ckp*ckers in the city centre th*t h*s more th*n it's f*ir sh*re of long term residents! Next stop w*s ...

After a good Christams in Carterton we headed south to Wellington. We decided to take the train and stay in a hostel.Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and is nestled at the bottom of the North Island on the coast. It is known as the windy city due to the strong sea winds. We had booked into a hostel called the Wildlife House which we found without too much difficulty. It was in a zebra stiped seven storey building in the centre of Wellington. The hostel itself was pretty good- very mod...

The morning after our adventures on Mt Tongariro we ventured south once again, this time destination Wellington. We followed route 1 past Tongariro National Park and the spectacular volcanoes across the desert road (so called I think because it's very flat and the ground it brown - unlike the rest of New Zealand). We stopped briefly for a rest at Foxton Beach about an hour north of Wellington were we got out of the car for a brief stroll before running back when the winds picked up. Arriving ...

The morning we left the Lochmara Lodge, many folks from the lodge joined us in a mass exodus across the Cook Strait via the Blue Bridge ferry from Picton to Wellington. None of them made the two-hour hike to get to their cars (they all had the wherewithall and money to take the lodge's ferry to Picton), but we all met at the Blue Bridge terminal for the 2 pm crossing. Though not at the Blue Bridge terminal, Avis was so kind to let us drop off our car at the parking lot so we didn't have to pa...

First, I'd like to thank everyone who expressed their concerns about my diet. I have reduced my average daily peanut consumption to less than 20g per day. It's been a while since I wrote, mostly because internet is so expensive, so first I'll do a brief summary of what I've done since Tauranga.



I went to a town called Rotorua, and when I arrived I didn't have good feelings about the place. Nothing was blatantly wrong with it, but something inside me told me that this wasn't a ...

After a journey through a desert and passing active volcanoes, last eruption in 1997, we reach Wellington and Mount Victoria with views of the bay and the city. From there we check in to the Wellywood hostel in the centre of town. The city centre felt bigger than Auckland in some ways and spreads out up into the hills. The best way of getting up there is the cable car. A San Francisco style trolley dropping you off at the Botanical Gardens at the summit. The gardens are free entry, quite vast...

Kia Ora from New Zealand! Unfortunately for you guys, internet access has currently been rather abundant so you'll be hearing from us slightly more regularly than before. Think of it as a good thing - my updates will be shorter and it won't take you 8 hours to read them... Last time I left you we'd just left Fiji for New Zealand and I had to eat my words regarding how well Air Pacific look after their passengers. Well we landed safely in Auckland only 1 3/4 hours late which considering they w...

Wow is week 3 over already? It's flown by! The first 2 weeks were action packed and felt like 2 months, but the past week has slipped past without me even noticing. I must be getting into the swing of things! I last left you in Queenstown where I was lying on my deathbed bravely overcoming some sort of deadly virus. Something like that anyway. Well I managed to drag my sorry **** out of bed and left Queenstown for Dunedin, the beer and chocolate capital of New Zealand. Our new driver was call...