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After enjoying the views one more time on our way out of River Valley, we made our way down to Wellington, New Zealand's capital city. During our drive down we stopped in a town called Bulls for about half an hour, just so the bus could refuel. It is only a small town but every shop in the town has tried to incorporate bulls into it. For example the were consta-bulls on the police station and afforda-bull on the bank etc. etc. Pretty amusing we thought.
After all that amusement in this small town we got into Wellington in the early evening. Now if we had stuck to the kiwi experience time scale then we would have spent roughly about 12 hours in Wellington (one night) before having to leave. Seeing as this is the capital and there is quite alot to see and do, this seems slightly odd, luckily for us we have got plenty of time to complete our trip and therefore booked six nights (again online before arriving to get cheaper rates). We had also asked to be on as higher floor as possible due to there being another on site bar, being a BASE hostel and all. We were given the sixth floor, which not only gave us a nice view out over parts of the city but was pretty quiet, with only the slight 'thump' of bass coming from the bar.
That evening we had some pizza and did some laundry, not the most exciting night but it needed to be done and meant we wouldn't have to waste time in the day for washing.
It was refreshing the next morning waking up in a BASE, having had a decent nights sleep, after going to bed stone cold sober. We started our day by taking a walk into town. I was after a Wellington Pheonix shirt, New Zealand's only professional football team. After walking around for a while, we stumbled upon a football mecca. A shop dedicated to purely football. Now this may not be a big thing in England but out here where everything is egg shaped ball orientated it was one hell of a find. To my delight it had the illustrious Pheonix shirt, but when I came to check the price, the dream was over, a cool $140 (roughly about 70 pound), well and truely out of my price range. Instead after browsing the bargain section I settled on a Timaru City AFC shirt, which was a steal at $10, even if I'm not sure who they are. The shop also had a good selection of (English) lower league pin badges, we had found a cracking little shop!
Next on the agenda was to find Belle a jumper for the colder climate, (her present jumper had a run in with a can of tuna) which was actually alot harder than we thought. We looked in several shops but as it is heading towards the New Zealand summer months, the winter stock was minimal and we came away emtpy handed.
That was about it for that day, we got some food in, had dinner and then went down to the mighty 'Basement Bar' and as it was 'cheap Tuesday' we sat and enjoyed a couple cheapies.
A lovely sunny day awaited us the following morning, Wellington was turning out to have some of the best weather we have had for a while. We thought we would make the most of the clear skies and sun and head up Mt. Victoria, the bottom of which was about 10 minutes walk from the hostel. There were two tracks to the summit, one of which took about three hours and one that took about half an hour. We opted for the half hour route, (which wasn't sign posted that well but we made it) and we were rewarded with 360 degree (I know...again!) of Wellington, out across the city to one side and the airport to the other, where we watched a couple of planes take off and land, pretty cool to watch.
After a spot of lunch we decided to make a visit to the Wellington Museum, the Te Papa museum to give it it's correct name. The place is massive with six floors to choose from. We started by checking out the colosal squid which was on display, the only one on display (if I remember correctly). It was a fairly impressive sight but the video of its accidental capture was even more spectacular. To give you a idea of the size of the thing (which now looked like something from Alien or Men in Black) it has / had eyes the size of footballs and if you were to make calamari from it, the rings would be the size of truck tyres. These were true when it was caught, it has shrunk over the years.
We then found something which was probably not designed for a 25 and 24 year old, a build your own squid game. We were desinging for a good 20 minutes, (hopefully) sending our finished products to various email address' we had chosen. We decided we couldn't spend all day designing squid so we checked out another floor, covering two in total before calling it a day.
The second floor was a mix of Maori culutre, New Zealand over the years, the Bristish empire and influence on NZ, World Wars and to Belle's delight, a section on Vogue in New Zealand.
We were determined to do as much as we could in Wellington and as alot of it was free it was an extra incentive. Our forth day in Wellington took us to the New Zealand government building also know as the 'beehive'. Now no guesses why it is called that (when you see the picture, although I'm not 100% convinced). It was a lovely day and the walk down there was a nice one in the sun.
There are free tours of the 'beehive' every hour and our bus driver on the way in had said that it is alot more interesting than it sounded, so, when in Rome and all that. A group of about 10 of us were taken round by our guide (who's name I can't remember) and showed various parts of the building. We went down to the basement and were showed the very technical earthquake system them have in place on the building, which, with any luck would stop the building from crumbling like a overdunked biscuit if one were to happen. Quite probable as Wellington sits on a fault line.
We were also taken around the various great halls, library and finally the room where all the MP's grunt at each other, wave rolled up bits of paper in the air and occassionally (or often) fall asleep. Apparently a common practice as Kiwi news picked up on a few years ago, showing MP's falling asleep on the news. An end was soon put to this and the MP's made it illegal to film within the building, letting them nap in peace.
Now it may not sound that interesting but it actually was and was a lot more interesting that what we did for the rest of the day. It involved sitting in the kitchen of the hostel for hours (literally hours) attempting to work a way of using the Kiwi bus. We did finally manage to work out a plan and book our buses so at least the afternoon wasn't completely wasted, even if it's not what we would have chose to do.
On day five we found ourselves heading back towars the 'beehive' again but this time stopping short of this asthetically horrendous building and jumping into a cable car which took us up the steep hill from Lambton Quay to Kelburn and the botanic gardens. We chugged our way up the hill leaving the windy Wellington streets behind us (it gets very windy at times). When we reached the summit we checked out the small cable car museum, which explains the history of the cable car itself. Again this probably doesn't sound very interesting and on this occassion it wasn't overly. However we did get to sit in one of the old cable cars and take a couple of snaps, before exploring (if that is the right word) the rest of the museum. This took all of about half an hour and that was that, we took a very brief stroll in the botanic gardens (we have been to a few on this trip and Belle was abit 'botanic gardened out') plus the weather wasn't overly nice so we boarded the cable car back down. The main attraction was the cable car itself, but to be honest it was abit of a let down. Saying that I'm not sure what else we could have expected, a couple of loop the loops maybe?
After some lunch at the hostel we decided to head back to the Te Papa museum and cover the floors which we had not seen on our first visit. The most of which was interesting (bar the modern art bit) and we saw some exhibits which made me at least feel slightly old. There was a exhibit on toys and technology, going back to the early 1900's all the way up to the present day, with the 1990's display doing the damage to my youth. Cassette tapes, Nintendo's and ghost buster toys (one's which I had owened) all gave me a gentle reminder that I was 25. This obviously didn't effect Belle as she is still a very youthfull 24.
Volcano's, the enviroment, natural history & European settlements took up the next couple of hours and after that we had finally seen what was on offer, or most of it at least.
Our last day in Wellington and the weather had decided not to follow the pattern of decent weather and instead opted to rain. Not only was it our last day in Wellington it was also the rugby world cup final that evening. What better place to watch it and soak up the atmosphere than the countries capital (maybe Auckland as the game was played there). After waiting for the rain to stop we headed out to find a cafe, in which we could take shelter from the inevitable rain, have a hot drink and a slice (or slab hopefully) of cake. Although there were lots of different cafes on the very cafe orientated Cuba Street, none of them took our fancy. We soon decided to stop looking for the perfect little cafe and instead we happened to stumble upon something we had not found a few day earlier, a jumper for Belle, every cloud.
We had now gone past the 'peckish' cake stage and full blown hunger had set in, therefore we decided to put the cafe and cake on hold and head for a pub lunch. We had not spent much money during our previous five days and decided to treat ourselves. We found an Irish pub (not hard to do) and tucked into fish and chips (Belle) and a burger (me), it was a nice treat to eat outside of the hostel.
Walking back around town it was extremely quiet, which I suppose would have been ok as it was a Sunday but the fact that the All Blacks were playing in the final that evening (and it was a bank holiday the next day) we expected the pubs and streets to be rammed full of pre - match beer drinkers. We actually over heard one Kiwi (who was a pre - match beer drinker) to another (its not a joke) "you wouldn't know there is a final tonight", this was very true, you wouldn't. We felt a bit let down by the lack of atmosphere and wondered if it would pick up later on.
Now when planning our buses we did not take into account the final being the day before we decided to leave Wellington, this wasn't a major issue except we would have to be up ready and on a bus at 7:00am the following morning, not ideal. We decided to have a couple of beers any way and try to soak up as much atmosphere as we could. We had a couple of happy hour drinks in the hostel bar before heading out about an hour before kick off in order to head down to the fan zone. We had figured that as it was so quiet in the day that we would not need to get to the fan zone as early as we did for the England game in Auckland...how wrong we were. On the way down there streets were busier than earlier in the day with All Blacks fans finding somewhere to watch the game. On our way down to the fan zone we felt like two salmon swimming against the tide with swarms of people heading away and back towards town, 'strange' we thought. When we arrived we found out (the rather obvious reason for this) that the fan zone was full and now a "1 in, 1 out" basis. The queue was already massive and with only about half an hour before kick off who was going to leave? With this in mind we made our way back towards town and proceeded to walk past full pub after full pub, with nowhere letting anyone in, it turned out we had underestimated the amount of support. With only about five minutes before kick off we admitted defeat and went back to the hostel bar, which had roughly 10 pepole in. Not the atmosphere we were after. We did however manage to get a couple of comfy seat in front of the tv complete with extra grainy picture. It seems that we were not the only ones which left it too late to find somewhere suitable to watch the game as the bar suddenly filled up (not to maximum capacity but better than it was). 80 minutes later the All Blacks were the champions of the rugby world, which delighted near enough everyone in the bar (bar a couple of French people) and the party began.
We finished our drinks and then decided to go and see what the atmosphere was like on the streets, surely better than earlier, it definitely was! Thousands of people had poured out onto the streets of Wellington, waving flags, blowing whistles, "wooooooing" and breaking out into the haka, it was quite the sight and exactly what we were after. We soaked it up for a good hour before heading back for one more beer and then bed. It was a shame we had to get up early for the bus the next day as the party (we could hear it from our room) went on all night and would have been good to be involved in, however we had been sampled some of it and what we did was good.
The following morning was an early start in order to get our bus to the ferry terminal and then the ferry across to the South Island. Six nights in Wellington was well worth it and I don't think we got bored once, with so much to do and see, made even better by the fact it was mostly free.
Alot of people we have spoke to have said that the South Island is more beautiful than the North, which is hard to imagine at present but we shall soon find out. Good by North Island you were brilliant, South Island, what have you got to offer....?
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