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Published: January 6th 2007
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The next part of my journey around New Zealand was to Wellington to meet my sister who was coming over for Christmas and New Year. I would have to get a coach North to Picton and then the ferry across the Cooks Straight - apparently the roughest ferry crossing in the world - bring it on!! As Vic was also heading North she jumped on the coach with me, and thank God she did for the moral support! If anybody was wondering, Hitler has had a sex change and now drives coaches between Christchurch and Picton, leaving behind doddering old ladies if they're a second too late - poor old dear!
Luckily we made it to Picton in one piece and said our farewells, Vic was staying on the South Island, and I boarded the ferry, which was an hour and a half late leaving due to the rough conditions. The crossing was extremely bumpy - I loved it, especially when I could see the waves crashing past my 7th deck window!
Safely on dry land in the North Island, I bumped into Sean, a fellow Stray passenger, and we arranged to meet up for some dinner later on. As we
Such a beautiful day!
Kirsty at the botanic gardens in Wellington chatted over our Chinese it transpired that Sean knows Tom and Bob, the cause of all chaos in Perth as he'd spent the previous Christmas with them in Sydney - it really is a small world!
Kirsty, my sister, was arriving mid-afternoon the following day and I spent the morning mooching around the shops, checking my watch every 5 minutes to see if it was time to go and meet her yet - I was that excited! After what seemed like an eternity it was finally time to head out to the airport for a very tearful reunion! The poor thing was exhausted though having flown to Hong Kong, then to Aukland and finally down to Wellington, so after a good old catch up an early night was in order.
The plan for travelling the North Island with Kirsty had been to hire a campervan and make our way up to Aukland, but our lack of forward planning and the fact that it was Christmas led to dissappointment and we had to settle for a car. In hindsight this was actually a better option as we've been able to stay in comfort in hostels, meet new people and for the
The great shopping trolley heist
Trying to negotiate through the corridors of the hostel! majority of the time it's been too bloody cold to camp anyway.
With this settled it was now time to check out what Wellington had to offer and stock up on some traditional goodies to make it feel more like Christmas - nuts, biscuits, cheese, crackers, wine, beer ... you get the picture! After our mini supermarket sweep it suddenly dawned on us that there was no way we'd be able to carry all the stuff back to the hostel, so there was only one thing for it ... nick the trolley! Admittedly we got a few funny looks pushing it through the streets of Wellington and our fellow residents at the hostel seemed pretty bemused, but there really was no other way!
Once we'd returned the pilfered trolley to its rightful owners at New World (the supermarket, not the dodgy club in Walsall) we decided to get a little hedumactaed and visited the fascinating Te Papa museum where we learnt a little about the Maori culture and also that despite the fact that there are no deadly animals in New Zealand, we could easily be wiped out by any number of impending natural disasters due to the countries position
Fascinating
A traditional Maori meeting house at Te Papa Museum on fault lines - hmmm reassuring!
On Christmas Eve afternoon we caught up with Jo and Becs who were staying about 15kms out of town at a friends aunties place, before heading out for something to eat and the obligatory Christmas Eve knees up. In the UK, Christmas Eve is arguably one of the biggest nights of the year and also one of my favourites - apparently this isn't the case in Wellington. After dinner, Kirsty and I walked up the main street with high hopes only to have all illusions of a big shindig shattered as every bar was either empty or closed - it was like a ghost town! Eventually we found a bar with more than 5 people in it that didnt' work there, albeit a very quiet place with no music playing, but at least there were other people there! We then stumbled across Steve, a very friendly guy from Liverpool who cleans at the hostel and spent the rest of the evening with him and his mates and actually had a pretty good time in the end.
Christmas Day was weird, being away from home and waking up in a dorm room. The sun wasn't even shining and I was very glad to have my sister there otherwise I would have felt very miserable. We started the day off by exchanging presents and having a brief chat to a pretty tipsy Mum and Dad at home - it was still Christmas Eve for them and we think they may have had one or two to celebrate the festivities! We then decided to treat ourselves to a dip in the hostels hot tub, but it was far too hot for either of us and so shallow that the jets just sprayed water across the room, so after about 5 minutes we gave up and headed to the kitchen to help in the preparations for the 'orphans Christmas dinner'.
About 25 of us had chipped in to have a traditional Turkey dinner, but of course we had to help cook it too! This was actually a really nice way to get to know the other guys at the hostel and we cracked open a few bottles of fizz whilst getting everything ready. Dinner was a success and we also had a secret Santa, so even though it was nothing like a traditonal Christmas, a good day was still had and we went to bed pretty tipsy with that 'stuffed' Christmas feeling.
It hammered it down on Boxing Day and it was more like being at home than in New Zealand - it's supposed to be summer here! We'd planned to catch the cable car to the botanic gardens and walk through them back down to the city, but the rain scuppered that, so we just caught the cable car up there and back down again. It was still good though, even if the view over the city wasn't quite what it could have been!
We met up with Jo and Becs in the afternoon and decided to spend New Years together in Taupo and also to meet in Napier the following day once we'd collected our hire car.
To be continued ...
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