Not that Windy Welly

Wellington skyline at dusk from our hostel room

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Wellington was the first big city we had hit since Auckland - it was quite strange being back - but fun all the same. We arrived mid afternoon, and the Kiwi bus schedule only allowed us one night there. We decided that we would leave the bus temporarily, and spend a few days by ourselves in Welly. We made some really good mates on our first bus and we didn't mind so much as we all arranged to meet up down in Queenstown later on in the month.

Our first night was spent with all the gang from the bus. We had an interesting, tasty and sometimes scary indian meal - the manager seemed to be mortally offended if you happened to pick one dish over another -God forbid you had an allergy like poor Melanie. To his credit, he made her a "special" meal just for her. We finished off the night in a bit of a fuzzy haze playing a funny drinking game in our hostel and by the end of it we were thankful we weren't up at 8am like the rest of them.

the famous buckets sculpture on cuba street.

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As for Wellington - well its really quite nice. It's got a big reputation for its cafe culture and its wind - neither of which seemed too obvious to us! It's a small city, quite compact and easy to walk around. We stayed for 3 nights, in a hostel right in the middle of town and it suited perfectly. The biggest tourist attraction in the city is the museum of New Zealand, known as Te Papa. It was pretty interesting - and free which is always good. Gave a broad history of New Zealand culture from the British days, Maori history and a really cool bit about all the volcanoes and earthquake fault lines around New Zealand (more about these whenever im arsed writing about Queenstown).

There's a lovely marina and small beach in the harbour, whoch is gorgeous on a nice day, as you'll see from the photos. We kind of toyed with the idea of staying there and getting a job but the lure of Queenstown and th South Island was a bit too much.

Cuba Street

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We missed the cable cars up to the Bottanical Gardens, which are supposedly lovely, but we never managed to get up to see them. Can't for the life of me remember why.

It was nice to be stationary for more than 24 hours in one place, so we enjoyed our time there. It's definitely a nicer looking city than Auckland in terms of its layout etc.. but didnt seem to have the same big city buzz. Maybe that's a good thing though. We were looking forward to inflicting ourselves on some new friends on our next kiwi bus which was going to bring us across the Cook straits and on to Nelson - our first taste of the Sout Island.