Day 12 - Wellington

We've now driven over 2.5 megameters! And we're now on the North Island!

Since I last posted, we took a hike in Abel Tasman National Park. It started with a thirty-minute watertaxi ride to a lovely beach and then we started walking southward.


This is the view shortly after we started.

A couple more beaches later (and almost insanity from the cicadas (or whatever the NZ equivalent of annoyingly noisy insects)) we arrived at Bark Bay for lunch. Even though it was high tide, we took the low-tide route down to the bay. The trail plunged right into the water. No beach there at all, just a few rocks in the shade. All right. We sat there awhile, then back up and around to the real beach:


I went swimming. Chunlin took a nap.

Another couple hours of hiking later, we caught a boat back to Kaiteriteri for the night.

Yesterday, we drove to Picton to catch the midday ferry to the North Island. "Scenic" is codeword for "curvy and slow." As in: That road between Nelson and Picton sure is "scenic." True, there were plenty of viewpoints, but mostly tall bushes obscured our view outward. Or rather, obscured Chunlin's view, as I had to concentrate on the road.

Oh well. It was scenic.

We watched the Super Bowl on the ferry. Darn those Colts. Chunlin picked them to root for because she saw how poorly the Bears had played against the Seahawks and knew they couldn't win (even though they were ahead 14-6 when we sat down).

We landed in Wellington a bit before 5 p.m. and drove into town. Stopped at the old cathedral:

It's much bigger than it looks.

Parliament buildings are a block away. Those were fairly nice, too.

I don't like driving in cities.

Found our hostel. Much nicer than the Auckland one. Dinner, walk around, etc etc etc. Good morning!