Going North

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My departure from Kaikoura happened very quickly, in many ways I was sad to leave. I'd felt like I was ready to go for a while, but I'd settled in there and was starting to feel almost like a local (well, almost). I will be back there in roughly a month, but I don't know yet how long I will stay. I'm going to miss Max and Kd, having lived with them for over four months and become very involved in their lifestyle and the ongoing work on their house.
I travelled up to Wellington on Friday with Leesa, a girl I have been seeing for a few weeks. An American chef with an infectious laugh, she works at a hotel just outside kaikoura, but managed to take a few days off to visit the North Island with me. We drove up the east coast and took the ferry from Picton, which passes through the beautiful Marlborough sounds before crossing the cook strait into Wellington Harbour.
Staying in Wellington was a refreshing change - it's the biggest city I've stayed in since Sydney in December! We spent a couple of days exploring the museums and shops and sampling the nightlife before crossing the Rimataku ranges to Wairarapa, the South-Eastern corner of the North Island.
Wairarapa is mostle occupied by sheep farming land, but there are also a large number of vineyards - the town of Martinborough is famous for its wineries. There is also some beautiful near-deserted coastline, some of which we decided to drive through. This is where I made one of my typical bad decisions and decided that we'd find somewhere to stay in one of the small towns along the coastal road of Palliser Bay. It turns out these are little more than small groups of houses, with nothing in the way of public services. When we reached the dead end at Cape Palliser Lighthouse, the sun had set and we had nowhere to stay, so we attempted to camp out in the car at the seal colony there.
Woefully unprepared with one sleeping bag between us, we lay there freezing for a couple of hours, listening to the sound of the waves, the howling wind and the roaring seals, who never seem to go to bed themselves. Eventually I decided that we should drive for a while with the heater on in an attempt to warm up, and I ended up taking us all the way back to Martinborough square in the early morning, still freezing because the car kept no heat.
After a hot cup of tea at first light we began to look for a hostel, prepared to settle for the most basic dorm room for the sake of a shower. What we found was a fantastic studio apartment with a kitchen and a spa bath at a place called Pinot Villas, at marginally more than our YHA room cost. I think the landlord took sympathy on us after hearing our story. He even lent us a couple of bicycles so we could tour the vineyards after we had recovered.
The weather has been great since we passed the Kaikoura range, except for a rainy day in Wellington, most of which we spent in Te Papa, the national museum. As you will see from some of my photos, the vegetation is starting to brown off in places, but considering this would be late October in the UK it's still very green.
So Leesa has gone back to Kaikoura, and I will be in Wellington for a few more days, staying with a vet nurse who works at the Zoo here, but more about that in the next entry...

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