Yha Wellington City

Melbourne airport rivalled Heathrow for gloominess and being uncomfortable. I had a shower and that woke me up a bit. It was a long wait for our connection to NZ because there were technical problems (nothing like instilling confidence in your passengers). After 3.5 hours we reached foggy Wellington. We were lucky to arrive when we did as planes were then cancelled. We had a basic room at the top floor of the YHA. First impressions of the city weren't favourable - graffiti on the outskirts an...

Up early this morning and on the bus to wellington. We drove through the Tongariro National Park and got to see the three imposing snow covered volcanoes up close. The centre one of the three was used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. All three are active and are known to erupt frequently enough. The coastline between here and Wellington was stunning, you could just see the South Island across Cooke Strait. When we arrived at Wellington, the bus took us to the summit of Mt. Victoria whe...

September could be summed up as the settling month. After Rotoria and the hot springs, Amy and I caught a bus to Tauranga, on the Bay of Plenty. We wanted to check it out as a potential place to live. We had heard good things about the town, and it was a little bigger than Nelson, or Rotorua, or anywhere else we had thought about. Plus it's on the coast, with beaches and sun and warmth. We took a 6:15 bus, so we got there really early and it was already warm and sunny. A beautiful day. We wal...

Greetings from windy Wellington! So they're not kidding about Wellington being windy. I arrived here on Saturday and it was pretty ****** weather. So I didn't immediately take to Wellington which, by the way, IS really windy! Hence it's nickname, Windy Wellington. I had a good night that evening that I arrived though. I met up with Dan and Sanhe in a really cool bar around the corner from the hostel and we had a great night. Sanhe is so funny and it was great to see her and catch up. Dan then...

Coming to New Zealand, I didn't quite know what to expect. I was imagining Lord of the Rings type beautiful, serene landscapes and...sheep. While I was right, there is actually so much more! Little did I know that it is also home to some of the most extreme (sometimes strange), adrenalin-inducing activities like bungy-jumping, sky-diving, rafting, and zorbing (rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable ball). The adventure goes as follows: *Auckland & Paihia I woke up my first morning in N...

Watched Enchanted on the ferry after catching the bus from Nelson to Picton. Not much to do in picton at all. Rain all the way!

Emmerdale-tastic!!!! Our 3rd job in NZ has turned out to be THE best, by a long teat:-) Working down on the farm with the Simmonds mob was an experience, adventure and a great laugh. Hetty gave us a laugh with her encyclopedic joke book, Bec made sure we were well fed and Nick was keen to ensure there were no dry spells;-o We got the chance to drive a tractor over the huge farm (250 "hectors", i think that is about 2000 football pitches!!!!). we were pulling trailers, machinery and scooping f...

So after a very boring 11 hours on a train we finally arrived in Wellington, not realising that it was to become our home for the next few months! We had an instantly good feeling about the city and immediately starting discussing what it would be like to live here. We stuck to our plan to head down to Nelson a few days later but we knew that if things didn't work out there then we come straight back to Windy Welly. For the few days in Wellington we stayed at the YHA which was a great hostel ...

07/02/09: Arrivée à Wellington en début de soirée. Quel choc que de retrouver l'ambiance citadine, après ces quelques jours passés en harmonie avec la nature. J'ai eu de la chance car ce samedi était un jour de grande fête... C'était la finale du NZ International Sevens Tournament (tournoi de rugby à 7) ! Tout le monde était dans la rue, tous portaient des déguisements vraiment dignes de ce nom (culture anglo-saxonne...), il y avait plein d'écrans géants. L'artère principale de la ville avait...

So it was time to move on from the rains of Rotorua... to the rains of everywhere else. We left on the Intercity just before 9 in the morning only to encounter our first road block of the journey. An over turned truck, meaning that the road between Taupo and Turangi was closed, so it was the scenic detour for us. Which allowed us time to see a lot of water flow by and all that. We were in a nice warm coach, so another hour or so, well what was that to us? That is until the windshield wipers a...