Blogs from Wellington, Wellington Region, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

We arrived in Wellington in the early hours of Mon 21st Jan after an uneventful and quite boring ferry crossing. We were disappointed that the clouds had prevented us from seeing the star formations but we were now on the North Island and ready for part two of our NZ adventure. The only other slight 'issue' that night was that we had no accomadation! And at 2am we were unlikely to find anything! But, I had planned for this scenario and we had purchased two sleeping bags, and we still had our two pillows so we slept in the car outside the ferry terminal. Madam was not impressed and we wouldn't be doing that again! After a dreadful sleep we left the car and wandered around Wellington for a few hours and got a coffee in ... read more

Hello guys How have you been? These last couple of weeks have been really great! Thanks to couchsurfing I had the pleasure to meet up with François and Stéphane, two webdesigners from Rennes, France. And I also met Mélanie, the (former) owner of the van also from Rennes. The van is fantastic, it had about 20 owners and has all the facilities anybody could ask for: matrass, cooking and eating gear, tent, bed linnen, sleeping bags, games, meds... and so on. I've already put a picture of it on Facebook, go check it out! The four or us headed to the west of Auckland to Puhoi a surfers paradise with a great beach. Unfortunately it was raining so we spend (an awful) night in the van and decided to go north to look for the sun ... read more

Mittwoch 31.Oktober 2012 Wellington Heute ist unser letzter ganzer Tag auf der Nordinsel. Es gäbe noch so vieles, was wir uns ansehen möchten, doch uns bleibt nur noch dieser eine Tag. Wir besprechen nach dem Frühstück die Möglichkeiten, berechnen den Zeitaufwand, kommen zu keinem Schluss und überlassen es dem armen Willi, eine Entscheidung zu treffen. Die Seal Colony am Turakirae Head, südwestlich von Wellington, ist die gewünschte Sehenswürdigkeit. Wir machen uns auf der Karte kundig, schätzen den Fahrt- und Gehaufwand ein und freuen uns auf den Ausflug. Der Wettergott ist eindeutig auf unserer Seite, verwöhnt uns mit einem tiefblauen, wolkenlosen Himmel und lässt ein sanftes Windchen wehen, damit uns beim Gehen nicht zu heiss wird, was will man mehr! Wir fahren durch eine bezaubernde Landschaft bis nach Wainuiomata.... und wissen nicht mehr weiter... read more

Right, heres the plan for the first three weeks of the trip. Once I return to Kolkata on the 13th of November (hopefully, my train ticket is currently waitlisted) I'll be staying there for a week or two, pottering about, maybe doing a bit of work and getting a bike sorted. Then the vague plan is to ride to Nepal, spend a few weeks there, then back into india and over to Jaipur and on to Jadpur in the desert. From there I'll head back Kolkata way and wind my way down the east coast of India to Hydrabad, and finally back up to Kolkata to fly out in Jan/Feb. I'll add more details as they come up but this is about it for now. 20th October 2012 Aeroplane Depart Wellington 8:35am - Arrive Auckland 9:35am ... read more

Kia Ora! Nå er me i New Zealand, eller Aotearoa, om du vil. Nærmere bestemt på Nordøya. Her lever me det glade backpackerliv – opplever og ser nye ting hver dag. New Zealand har så mykje å by på. Og det er ikkje for ingenting det blir kalt ekstremsportens hjemland. Naturen her er også fantastisk fin, og den er så varierende. Du kan stå på ein plass og se rundt deg. På den eine sida har du norsk natur, på den andre sida tropisk regnskog, og andre plasser ørken, sydenstrender eller høye Alpe-lignende fjellkjeder. Her fins alt! Me starta oppholdet vårt i NZs største by, Auckland. Der utforska me byen, gjekk på gåtur med sikring over Auckland Harbour Bridge, og Christina prøvde Fish n’ Chips som visstnok skal være så populært her. Og på kvelden reiste ... read more

Welcome back to Wellington. Got a bit of a shock as I'd only been in the hostel for about an hour when we had an earthquake. The epicentre was actually 60km down just south of Picton on the south Island, so quite a way away but the building definitely rocked! Te Papa, the museum in Wellington has 'quake-proof' foundations and they have a display where you can see how they work. It's pretty cool actually. I wonder if they intend to rebuild Christchurch on them, or perhaps they should just move the city a few kilometres? I thought about going to the theatre but got confused with the dates of when the show I fancied seeing was on. Ah well. Wellington is a bit of a sprawling city so just kept to the waterfront, as usual ... read more

Sinds deze late namiddag zijn we aangekomen in Wellington. Wellington is de hoofdstad van Nieuw-Zeeland en ligt op het Noordereiland. We hadden eigenlijk gisterenavond geboekt. Er zijn 2 ferrymaatschappijen vanuit Picton naar Wellington en Bluebridge is de goedkoopste. Het is wel een roestige ferry en totaal niet modern maar voor die 3 uurtjes hadden we er geen probleem mee om in een muffe zetel te zitten. En toch mochten we deze namiddag al mee met de ferry. We hadden gezien op ons ticket dat we dit moesten uitprinten. Een klein probleempje want we hadden geen printer. Deze morgen kon de campingbaas het niet afprinten want hij vertrouwde geen pdf formulieren (hij wist niet wat dit was en wij konden het niet omzetten naar iets anders). We besloten dus naar de ferrymaatschappij zelf te rijden en te ... read more

Same Shit - Different Topic I drove into Raglan, settled down at the bar at a hotel and soon after Katka and her surfer friend Noah joined me. They gave me a quick update on the town. It is about SURFING. Apparently I had stumbled into one of the premier surf spots in the world. A Swedish guy I met at the backpacker place I stayed at, told me that he had been dreaming about that place for 15 years and it seemed like he was almost offended when I told him that I don't surf. I understand him a bit. When I had just started diving on Pulau Weh a group of young Danes showed up. They had no intention (or not enough money) to dive and I couldn't help asking why the hell they ... read more