Today’s blog is dedicated to Stephanie, Rachel, Gretel, Anokhee, and all the lovely Bank Streeters who will be “suffering” (not my word) through Monday night class in a few short hours. I miss and love you all :)
The last few days have been such a blur it’s a little hard to begin. After Tongariro we have essentially sped through activities and places and crawled into bed at night exhausted. To be honest, I’m not even sure if we’ve had decent wi-fi as I’ve been too tired to attempt to write. The bus ride from Taupo to Wellington was a good 6/7 hours. We really only had 1 day in Wellington which was a shame as we both really loved the city. It has a great vibe and felt the most city like with real culture and life to it. We started off our only day in Wellington at the Wellington Zoo. If you’ve already peeked at Goodheart’s pictures you will have seen that Whitecorn …well…there are no words. Forget the rest of the animals in the zoo- all Whitecorn can tell you is that a red panda sat in her lap while eating pears and grapes from her hand. Oh happy day!
But seriously, that zoo is pretty cool. That is the closest either of us have been to some of these animals- the cheetah came right down to the fence to say hi. The kangaroos, wallabys and emus weren’t even in cages. What the what?!
After the zoo we went to the famous Te Papa Museum. Five floors of really cool exhibits ranging from natural history to Maori history to war history…kind of like the Auckland museum in terms of content (but we liked the Auckland Museum better. Shhh…) We left the museum for the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens and we walked back to town from there.
We left Wellington and the North Island via ferry for the South Island and Nelson. Nelson was essentially a place to stay in order to visit Abel Tasman National Park. We went kayaking for the day (a first for both of us!) and saw seals, including a baby!, ate lunch on the beach, and hiked along the coast back to the place we rented the kayak. It was beautiful and the water is the most incredible color.
Now we’re hanging out in Franz Josef for a few days. Today we hiked up to the glacier and did some smaller walks around the area. So far the south island has lived up to the promise of beauty. Today we had dinner at the hostel and just so happened to sit with 3 other Americans who have been doing extensive traveling themselves and were able to hear a bit about the rest of the places on our trip, which was great. From here we will move on to Fox Glacier then Queenstown. It’s crazy to realize we’re coming up on the end of our time in New Zealand. As much as we love this country we admit we are looking forward to a new country.
Of course, we love and miss you all.
W&G
