Hello from Windy Wellington

Liz here:

Sitting in NZ’s capital city of Wellington, at a café called Kapai on Courtenay Pl., around the corner from our hostel. We’re actually staying in a hotel, not a hostel – quite a nice place, the Cambridge Hotel, with a posh lobby and extremely high, beamed wooden ceilings – but it does have a backpackers’ wing. We’re in a six-bed dorm, so don’t think we’re forgetting our budget now.

The hotel has a pub attached: a place you might call your “local,” with thick, wooden tables, lots of old men drinking, and rugby on the television. Although when we arrived for an afternoon pint earlier, they were showing U of M vs. State basketball! I went crazy, shrieking “That’s my school!” while the guys looked on bemusedly (and a little bit impressed, I dare say.) I forgot it was March Madness time.

We’ve been camping, mostly. In the two weeks and a day since we left Paihia, tonight’s just our fifth night in a hostel. The last two nights, however, were freezing (almost literally), very wet, and almost comically windy. The guys kind of revolted (with Jen temporarily gone, the ratio of non-campers to campers has risen to 3:1) and here we are, booked into the Cambridge Hotel, with our soggy tents forgotten in the car’s boot. Anyway, it is Lewis’ 21st birthday, and I don’t think Lewis gets any happier than when he has not only a bed, but one in a building that is half pub.

I like this city. I left the guys in the aforementioned pub and have been exploring for the last two hours, wandering the streets and perusing a used bookstore. Since we never really spent any time in Auckland (NZ’s biggest city) Wellington feels huge. It’s the most culture and the most people I’ve experienced since September, basically. From my perch here, I can see two Chinese, an Irish, an Argentinian, a Jamaican, a Moroccan, and three Indian restaurants. Awesome. There are tons of people walking around, theaters, an opera house, a yacht-studded harbor, parks and statues everywhere.

The only drawback is that it’s windy as Chicago and cold. People are literally walking around in winter coats. After months of Paihia summer, this feels “Baltic,” as the guys would say.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of travel. We bop around in the tiny car (three packs securely strapped to the top), stopping occasionally for coffees, toasted sandwiches, or curry takeaways. We cook a lot of instant noodles, oatmeal, and pasta on my little stove, and the guys have gotten quite good at setting up the tents. The roads are a blur of sheep-y farmland and rolling hills, and tiny towns with the requisite bakeries selling mince pies, and fish & chip shops, and dingy gas stations. Everywhere begins to look the same, driving down the middle of the country, and that’s why I’m glad for a couple days in Wellington, which is definitely its own distinct place.

Photo update soon – stay tuned!
Liz x