National Park to Wellington

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We get up and get our bags packed by 10:30 am. We get on rental computers in the lounge area for an hour so we can kill some time before lunch. Our bus to Wellington leaves at 2:30 pm.
We walk down to Eivin’s (the family owned café) but they are only open for dinner, so we decide to try to get to the rail station restaurant before the trains come in. We get there about 12:30 pm and the trains are not due until at least 1:00 pm, so we have a wonderful lunch and watch the trains come in from Auckland and Wellington before going back to our hotel to pick up our bags.
The trip to Wellington is beautiful. We travel through hilly and terraced pastureland. Since it is spring here there are baby lambs and calves. Some of the lambs have already been sheared and look quite naked. The countryside gets more beautiful as we travel south and it makes me anxious to get to the South Island.
We pass through many small towns, although larger than I would expect considering how rural NZ is. I don’t know how these little towns seem to be thriving as they are really quite close together. It appears that each has some sort of industry though.
We are on this bus for 6 hours and I am assessing why I find the Kiwis so charming. They are not particularly a handsome group, looking more British for the most part. Actually I think it is because they have the old British manners but since NZ is so egalitarian, there are no pretenses. They are very friendly and curious of us since we are traveling more as Kiwis do than as typical tourists.
We arrive in Wellington about 8:30 pm and the bus stop is at the old train station, which was built in 1906. I don’t know why I have such a fascination with old train stations but I haven’t seen one this beautiful since we were in Europe. We are staying at a backpacker hotel converted from a lovely old art deco hotel that had seen its better days. Our room reminds me of a room that Michael and I had in Paris the first time we went there. It is fairly small and the bathroom is very dated, but it is clean, the location is great and the price is good.

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