We arrived into Wellington at 9.30pm on Saturday and jumped onto the shuttle bus to take us to the centre. The driver was most perplexed that we had not booked anywhere to stay but we assured him that it had worked for us for the last 5 months and he eventually agreed to drop us in the centre of town. We started walking to find a hotel and found ourselves in the main bar and restaurant area of Wellington. We felt pretty out of place in our hiking gear with our huge rucksacks on our backs as the drunken stag and hen parties veered round us! After almost an hour of wandering we found a hotel with rooms free and gratefully crashed out.
The next day,after an extremely leisurly start even for us, we headed out into Wellington. We walked over to the current Parliament building, known as the Beehive, a concrete creation which is juxtaposed next to the elegant old Parliament building.
Our hotel had no cooking facilities, which was an excellent excuse to go out for dinner, so we headed out for a Chinese buffet, costing us only $30.....a bargin!
We decided that we were going to hitch north out of Wellington and see how far we could get. We wanted to end up at Tongariro national park in the centre of the north island. With some clever map reading we managed to find a slip road onto the motorway heading north. Our first lift was a very pleasant, but slightly mad Fijian lady who proceeded to tell us her life story and we learnt a surprising amount about the history of Fiji. She had come to New Zealand as a nun many years ago but was now settled here with her husband. The next lift was equally religious but with a slightly more intense attitude. Joe was in his thirties and was on his way to do some tramping and possum hunting! We had been in the car 20 minutes making polite conversation whe he uttered the immotal words "do you guys believe in god?" John diplomatically answered "well, um, we would have to say no". Here followed some interesting discussions in which neither party really conceeded ground on the issue. We were also told that as scientists we probably believe "crazy ideas" such as we are decended from monkeys and the earth is more than 10000 years old....that Darwin, what an idiot huh?! Let's hope we never get a lift from someone who utters "do you believe in god" and "I'm off hunting possums" in the same sentence again!
Our final lift was from a kiwi guy working on the railways and he took us all the way to Ohakune in Tongariro national park with no reigous utterances whatsoever. We booked into a cheap but lovely motel in Ohakune. Yesterday we hired some mountain bikes....more expensive than those in Laos but 1000 times more reliable....and cycled the Old Coach Road, part of an old drove road linking Wellington to Auckland before the railway was completed in 1908. It was a beautiful, if steep, ride through forest amd with little pieces of railway history along the way. On returning the our motel we jumped straight in the spa pool to try and negate any aches and pains!
After waking up slightly saddle sore today, we have just completed a lovely forest walk in the Tongariro national park. Now it's back to the motel and spa pool to try and get rid of those aches before we attempt the Tongariro Alpine Crossing tomorrow!
