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Published: February 14th 2009
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February 8th
We woke early to finish packing and making the four star and moon hotel presentable again. We gave back the van and we had a sad moment when the van disappeared around the corner. We then took the bus to Picton, then the Interislander and before long, we were back on Courtney Place and wandered back into Wellywood to see if we could stay again. We could and did.
Then we decided to see if our friends, with whom we’d met in Wellington before, were in. They were, it was Ashta and her boyfriend Michael. We cracked a bevy, a couple bottles of vino bianco and melted into a marathon of Simpsons, sweeeet!
February 9th
Woke afresh and after some leftover cereal from the campervan, we headed out to ‘The Museum of New Zealand’, otherwise known as ‘Te Papa’. It was Wellington’s must see and best of all, it was free.
There was loads of stuff about the geological forces that shaped New Zealand into the dramatic landscape we see today. We hit an underwater ‘Deep Ride’ where we were in some makeshift box with a TV in it, anyway
it took us from the surface to deep underwater and we caught glimpses of both real and fake footage from the depths, from the luminescent plankton to the Sperm whale. It was fun in its tacky way.
Then we saw one of their most famous exhibit, it was a colossal squid. It had been found caught up in a net by astonished fishermen. To tell you the truth, I thought it would be larger but it was cool seeing so many of its suckers with spikes up close.
One other notable bit of fun was the ‘Earthquake House’ where there was a TV playing old stuff from back in the day when they had a big quake, then the lights went out and the building shook. It was funny because so many people just weren’t expecting it; I mean come on this is the Earthquake House. In all fairness though, it was crap but it made us laugh.
We had lunch and kept on meandering around the place at minimal speeds for another good hour or so before we got bored. It was back to Wellywood for a lie down and most importantly write up the blog.
February 10th
Katherine had checked out renting a car to get to Auckland at Wellington ferry terminal and after checking bus prices, it seemed as if there was little difference. That was until we heard about the relocation of cars in Wellington back to Auckland. We do them a favour and they do us a favour by giving us a car for NZD$30 for three days. The catch, we didn’t know what we were going to get.
I left Katherine outside the hostel while I popped round the corner to go pick up whatever it was. It was 15 minutes later when I came round the corner and honked the horn. It was a new Mitsubishi Lancer with air-conditioning and cruise control, we were so happy it wasn’t one of those little boxes running on sewing reels kind of thing.
We cranked the music and hit the highway north. Plan A was to get to Tongariro National Park and weather depending maybe do a little hike. It was an unpleasant drive in the rain and I do mean proper rain. With the wipers on full speed, my vision was still impaired. God bless the GPS, it got us there with no hicks at all. Sadly though, about 10 km away from Tongariro we could see that the mountains were all in the clouds and it was still bucketing it down. So, no walk then!
After checking in to a ski-hotel, which was cleverly named as Skotel, we razzed it to the nearest supermarket (40 km round trip) and grabbed some pasta and more plonk. We made good use of having a full kitchen again.
After dinner we, again, looked out of the window to see nothing but cloud. It was a shame, especially being at New Zealand’s highest hotel, so we watched a film and crashed.
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