Blogs from Wellington, Wellington Region, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 12

Angus here reporting on a sensational sporting weekend that I experienced in Wellington. On Saturday, Jo-Ann and I went to see the Hurricanes play the Bulls in rugby’s Super 12. It’s a league made up of 12 teams from the southern hemisphere - 5 from NZ, 4 from South Africa and 3 from Australia. Each team plays the other once and then the top 4 in the league contest the semi-finals, and then there’s final. The Hurricanes represent the Wellington region and the Bulls are based in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. The rugby is renowned for being high pace, very skilled with some seriously hard tackling but usually yields plenty of tries. However, the game we went to was total pants! Defences were on top and with the poor passing, turnovers and lack of ... read more

Dearest friends and family, Hello from Napier, Art Deco capital of the world!! I will mercifully spare you accounts of my travel because nothing really uncomfortable has happened yet, and we all know that stories about nasty occurences make for better entertainment. I have, however, left Te Nikau retreat. :-( The weather cleared up beautifully last week and it was how I imagined Hawaii would be like. I should have some awesome pictures in a bit, once the English gal Claire (who hates beetroots, sushi, hummus, spicy stuff, couscous, etc, thus giving merit to the stereotype that Brits -- hi, Roger -- don't like anything remotely exotic and tend to baby their palates with the usual grey-colored cuisine their ancestors have ground into their culture) e-mails me the photos she took with her camera. If ... read more

We arrived in Wellington at 7:30am on 3rd March and we were met at the airport by our friends, Simon & Liann who we will be staying with until we find our own digs....which will take a while! Angus used to play basketball (if that's what you call it!) with Simon when he and Liann were over in the UK for 2 years and we stayed with them when we came to New Zealand last year on our honeymoon. They are so amazingly hospitable and we have fun with their kids, Isabella who is 3 and Dominic who is 11 months. We've had a few trips into the city of Wellington which is about 40 minutes on the train from Silverstream where we are staying. Welly's a great city with a lovely harbour and quayside, loads ... read more

Because of a huge debockle with my ticket to New Zealand (which I don't want to get into...I'll just leave it at that) I had to stay in Manly Beach Australia for a couple more days. But that actually ended up working out perfectly, because during my last two days there I got a chance to play tons of volleyball. I entered a recreation tourney on Saturday (and my team won our net) and then I was supposed to play in a money tourney but it got rained out (see photos). The weather ended up clearing up and so I went back down to the courts and played for another 4 hours (I'm still a little sore). So Monday morning (which is Sunday lunch time for you guys) I hopped on a plane and was finally ... read more

Up early for the long drive down to Capital City, Wellington is about 400 KM's away and should be a about a 5 hour drive with a luch stop half way. We arrive in Wellington about 3pm and it looks a very trendy place, the drive in along the docks is nice and the city looks very European, houses on hills and cliffs in loads of different styles and colours, it has a good feel about it. We find our zebra print hostel without much trouble, slight problem though, there is no hostel parking, there is on street parking outside the front door but it's $4 an hour, it's 60 cents here in Nelson, Capital City strikes again, it's George Street in Edinburgh all over again so I abandon the car with the usual "Meter Reader" ... read more