In Wellington, we decided to go back to private hostel rooms after a rough dorm experience in Taupo. The dorm was just ours at first, until we came back from dinner and found the other 4 beds taken and the room strewn with their 'stuff'. At bedtime we had to stumble around in the dark getting ready as someone was in bed. Trying to get to sleep was near impossible (for me anyway - Darren). Angie had ear-plugs in but I forgot mine and had to suffer the snoring of the other people (Angie might say that's sweet revenge). At 5am after a fitful night's sleep I gave up and read my book for a few hours. In the morning one of the Americans in the room came up with a comment straight out of a Bill Hicks joke. He had seen me reading when going to bed and again when he woke up and challenged me 'Hey buddy, what were you reading that was so interesting?' I replied 'Errr, a book?'
We've covered quite a few miles already and are enjoying the regular feel of the open road stretching ahead of us. It's made more interesting by the scenery, the local radio and the road kill! The landscape had been pretty varied but as we head South it is gradually getting higher. A lot of the native forest has been replaced by pine trees which are grown in straight rows and cover huge tracts of land, except when they have been felled and whole chains of hillsides are left bare, brown and scarred. Many of the roads are lined with bushes that have bright yellow flowers - Broom, for the horticultural massive - and these provide a striking contrast against the dark green background of the pine, and the blue sky (when we're lucky). The local radio on the other hand has been amusing in a provincial way - we've listened to political debates (Maori land rights are a hot topic at the moment), modern day versions of biblical fables (there are a lot of religious channels disguised as normal radio), and some great station slogans including 'Coast fm - the 80s, 90s...and whatever' and 'Golden fm - the best music...on Earth'. And the road kill is copius - something every km as an estimate. Mostly, from what we can make out, it is possums. Although quite cute and furry they are definitely pests over here as they are an introduced species and are eating and killing a lot of the native trees. In most of the forests we have walked in, there has been poison put down for them, so a few lost on the roads can't be a bad thing.
Wellington, NZ's capital, is a lovely chilled city - more so than Auckland and that's not particularly unchilled. It is situated on an undulating coastline amongst lots of treetopped hills, so it looks a bit like a mini Rio de Janiero. The cultural and nightlife scene is very lively, evidenced by most clubs being open til 7am. One club doesn't open until 5am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. But, true to its nickname it is very windy, sitting on the Southern coast. The Cook Strait between the North and South Islands must act as a wind tunnel.
The morning of our first full day in Wellington was spent mostly finding somewhere to park the car - most frustrating - but finally with some creative thinking and traffic cone-moving we left it and crossed our fingers. We headed downtown to the quintessential Wellington tourist attraction - the cable car (railway style, not gondola type) up to the botanical gardens. Here we got a great view of the harbour and city centre, and then spent a good 3 hours exploring the lovely large gardens. It's peak rose blooming time at the moment so it all felt very English.
We walked around the parliment buildings, the city's old cathedral (tiny, wooden, gothic style building, used right up to the 1960s), new replacement (large, angular omen-like structure) and harbour front. After all that walking it was time for a drink at an Uber-trendy bar where we sat amongst the office workers having their post-work drink and got served the biggest mussels we've ever seen, whose shells had flourescent green rims.
The following day, we drove out to the rocky volcanic coast surrounding the capital for a walk. It turned out to be another fruitless couple of hours spent looking for wildlife. This time it was seals we were hoping to pester. No such luck, they must have had advance warning of our arrival. But we did see some dramatic coastline, getting alternately blown almost off the ground and baked in the sun as we rounded the headlands and coves, with the snowy peaks of the South Island visible in the distance.
On our last night in Welly we actually ventured out drinking! This has become a rarity, staying in with a box of wine being more realistic on our budget (and we'd rather spend our money getting a buzz off adrenalin instead of alcohol). We had a fun night out in a series of trendy bars (the first place was advertising a deep house night called Positive, funnily enough) with Kirsty, a friend of Angie's from back home. It was great to have someone else to talk to apart from each other!
Before catching the ferry to the South Island, we had some time to kill so went to Te Papa, NZ's national museum. A couple of hours was completely inadequate. It's a huge, purpose built place on 6 floors with loads of interactive exhibits and cool stuff. Being short of time we did all the highlight attractions and as such ran around the museum like a couple of kids. We did a virtual bungy jump, which was not actually that virtual as you get strapped into a machine, turned upside down and wiggled about (although even that was not enough to impress Darren), and went on an earthquake simulator which felt more like being on a rickety old BR train.
Despite being in an English speaking country we are still having trouble conversing with the locals due to their unusual pronounciation of the mother tongue. Check out this conversation:
We enter an internet cafe hoping to use the one thing on offer, the internet.
Darren: 'Hi, can we use the internet?'
Kiwi: 'I beg your pardon?'
Darren: 'er, the internet'
Kiwi: 'Excuse me?'
Darren: 'Internet?'
Kiwi: 'Oh! The Uunternit'
Darren: 'Yes, the Uunternit please'
They tend to pronounce I as U and E as I. Try it yourselves and see how you can mangle the Quins Ungleesh by using simple vowel transference.
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