Paul's Travel Notebook

Paul's New Zealand Picture Album! Updated 2/1/05

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Day 4 - Getting to know Wellington

Day 4 Sunday: 1-2-05 First real look at New Zealand

HI HO: This is our first full day in Wellington. We all wake up early, around 7AM local time, most of us on the earlier time schedule from the States. Breakfast is served. The food here at the dorm isn’t so great, but it gets the job done and makes a good conversation piece. So far, I’m coming up short in my quest to find NZ-specific cuisine. The closest we’ve gotten so far to local flavor is the numerous Kebob shops in the area, which are quite tasty.

After breakfast, an impromptu group of us goes downtown. We are staying at Weir House, a dorm of Victoria University that’s situated on the side of a hill. To get to it is rather annoying, but there’s a cable car that runs right by us that will drop you off right in town for $1 NZ. It’s quite interesting and reminds me of San Francisco. Part of it also reminds of a ski lift and I get a distant yearning for some crisp powder to carve up. I shake that off.

The hills and character of this city also add to the resemblance. While wandering downtown, someone in our group looks up, notices a mountain, and no one can think of a good reason why we shouldn’t climb it. Apparently there are busses that go to the top, but being a bunch of young restless (and reckless) college students, we go on foot.

Turns out, the mountain is called Victoria Mountain, and it is quite beautiful. We didn’t have a map, but using the logic of as long as we’re walking uphill, we’ll get to the top, we eventually get to the peak. We stop for food along the way, and hike up carrying various bits of sushi, French bread, sandwiches, wraps, grapes, and other goodies from the local New World, the NZ version of Kroger.

PEAK: The view from the top is amazing. You can see the entire city, the shoreline, and the bay. Wellington is situated kind of like San Fransisco, on a bay and also on the coast. NZ is composed of two islands, the North and Sound islands. The North island is the more populated one, probably because the south island gets pretty rough in the winters. From the summit, you can see NZ’s cricket stadium, a rugby field, tons of nice buildings, and much more. Someone finds the place we’re staying, which is when we realized we’ve covered quite a distance. I test out the panorama feature on the camera, and the results are quite pleasing.

BEACH: We descend the mountain on the other side and walk to NZ’s shoreline. I can’t recall being on a beach so close to a mountain before, but I imagine it is what Hawaii is like. The beach looks like artificial sand, but we can’t tell. The shoreline is very nice, lots of shops and people walking around, and best of all, not a lot of tourists. I was worried I had traveled 10,000 miles to end up at another Myrtle or Panama City Beach, but this is pretty sweet. The water in the bay is quite cold - we see a few people in the water wearing wetsuits, as well as some intrepid children who haven't learned what hyopthermia is yet.

When we get back, we realize we’re all really really sunburned. I think this is going to be one of the worst burns I’ve had.

That night, we start to get settled in, and I notice the refrigerator by our rooms isn’t working. On a whim, I swap it out with one downstairs, hoping nobody will notice. Some of the other guys take a hint from the swap and the next thing I know a ton of furniture has been rearranged to make things a bit more comfortable.

Exhuasted from the trip, we wander downstairs and watch Napolean Dynomite. This is the second time for me, and it gets funnier every time.

Off to bed with this wicked sunburn. I hope it doesn’t get worse.

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