Rain, rain go away!

---

Thursday 16th November

Paul - Thankfully no hangover this morning. But we did get our first sleep in for ages so Laura "I managed to snooze in a tuk-tuk on a pot holed road in Angkor" Darby was especially pleased. Only the thought of a fry up for breakfast got her out of bed. After brunch we wandered down to the seal colony but as it was high tide we couldn't get out to see them close up.

It was a lovely day so we went and sat on the lookout over Kaikoura and admired the snow capped mountains in the distance. Essential activites over (we read by the sea, threw stones into the water, admired the views, went shopping, argued over whose socks smelt the worst) we strolled back to the hostel to have tea.

We were startled to see an extremely old couple pottering around the kitchen and generally getting in the way. Doris (as we'd named her) had decided that the fridge was for her exclusive use only and any other food in there was to be thrown out. Boris (her sexy husband) was so engrossed in his sandwich of mushy contents unknown that we thought we best leave them to it. We'll probably wake up tomorrow to find Doris knitting in the corner of the kitchen while Boris tells her to "turn that bloody radio off."


Friday 17th November

Laura - We had a very early start (5am!!) to go and swim with the dolphins. Unfortunately, when we arrived to check in we were informed that the tour had been cancelled due to bad weather. How disappointing! We'd already booked our ferry ticket to the North Island so there was no chance of staying around and seeing if the weather changes tomorrow. We'll just have to miss out this activity unfortunately.

We went back to bed for a couple of hours (why not?) before checking out of the hostel and going to the seal colony on our way out of town. There was a cute little seal dozing by the car park, totally unaware of the crowds of people gathering to take photos of him.

The ride to the ferry was dull, with the bad weather blocking out any nice views. The fery ride itself was even duller, and took far longer than I expected (3 hours). Although there was nice scenery at the start of the crossing, we didn't stay outside for long to admire it because the weather was horrific and there were a million people smoking (I thought people went outside on boats for FRESH air?!)

We drove into Wellington and checked into a rather grotty hostel where there was a pretentious girl boring everyone with her dull tales of her job (which by the way, she is absolutely "amazing" at). Played scrabble then went to bed, listening to the pouring rain outside.


Saturday 18th November

Paul - Another disappointing day thanks to the weather and it looks like it could spoil tomorrow too as we were going to do the Tongariro crossing (traversing the finest walk in New Zealand - passing 3 active volcanoes) but it's forecast rain still!

We had a potter around Wellington this morning for a couple of hours but after deciding that it's not really that interesting we got in the car and drove off. Miraculously Laura was asleep within minutes and continued her usual snooze-a-thon until we reached yet more torrential rain.

The scenery outside looked pretty nice (all rolling green hills and flowery meadows) when we could get a glimsp through the horrible weather. It's 20 degrees and pissing it down!

Arrived at National Park, inside Tongariro National Park (what a silly name for a village, National Park) where we checked into a very cheap and nice motel. We were told the bad news about tomorrow and debated what to do. Probably drive on to Taupo and come back here if the weather turns at all.

---

Comments

[Cindy&Jayson]

Raining in New Zealand!
Hi there - your blog is bringing us so many memories... we traveled through it in December03/January04... and it rained about 75 % of the time! We then living in Auckland for 9 months and it rained most of the time there too! Not fun... NZ is gorgeous though! Enjoy your travels! www.jambrose.org/travel