08 – jan 26: national park to wellington

departing national park

upon a fairly late waking up (9am), we checked out at 10, had breakfast in their kitchen anyway (more french toast and i even had oatmeal this time – ‘date delicious’. i mostly thought otherwise but finished the oatmeal anyway.), and departed for the very long drive to wellington and our highest rated hostel 25 minutes north of wellington.

the drive was as usually scenic and thus boring in terms of writing. pretty sky, pretty mountains, pretty ocean (actually tasman sea), pretty beach, pretty rocks, pretty hills, pretty trees, pretty sheep. we’ve seen a lot of constructions, and the road was very challenging as we were moving out of the mountains.

speaking of the mountains, mt. ruapehu decided to be kind and showed its magnificent height and face and ice covered peaks on the morning of our departure. it was a fantastic view and i’ve taken far too many photographs of it as usual.

guesthouse by the tasmanian sea

arrival to our hostel (highest rated backpackers hostel in new zealand – 96%) was fantastic. the place is a wooden house on the shore of the ocean, and our extra special room had the lookout onto the ocean. it was definitely worth the exta 5 dollars we’ve each paid, as the view was spectacular at all times. however while the house, being extremely pretty, and the room, being well cared for, and the view, all were awesome, what really made this hostel remarkable is the people.

the owners, john and helen, are a couple that seem to absolutely adore everyone that comes to visit them. it really does feel like you are visiting, as opposed to staying in their house – you feel like a guest, and that’s how they address you in their cute little signs around the place – “to all our guests, please leave the bathroom prepared for the next person”. its such a nice way imho to write signs.

the entire hostel is just mindblowingly high quality building. besides it being a super old 1940’s wooden house that is apparently a local historical landmark, the owners obviously put thought and love and money into all aspects of the stay. the kitchen has a 6 stove gas burner, and each toilet has its own mini sink. there is soap and shampoo (first hostel with that), and even hairdriers in each shower. the showers are amazing, with awesomely hot water, and the even the toilets have this kitchy cute “transparent plastic embedded with shells and sea stars” seats.

the kitchen is huge, and besides the stove has a freezer, a thoughtful stack of plastic boxes to put your food inside, and an insane amount of cutlery for all intents and purposes. there was even a 2 book edition of backpacker’s recips – 2 notebooks, one totally filled and one on the way there, with recipes from previous guests of the house for cheap/tasty/intersting (pick 2?) meals. i really wished we had time to stay and enjoy all this, and try cooking something.

i could go on about the hostel forever, but instead let me just say that the next morning we gave the owners one of our canadian souvenirs – a thermometer with a canadian penny – that they very happily and thankfully accepted. it was the first souvenir we gave. i’m 100% intent on coming back to this place, and hopefully meeting both of the owners again.

windy welly

when we were checking in, besides givng an interesting introduction to the house, the city in which it is located, and history of wellington (capital of NZ, and the nearby big city which most backpackers in this hostel aim to visit), john also asked us about our time constraints and drew up a nice walk in wellington that we had the time and energy to take. he highlighted interesting parts, recommended places to stop (free museum, pretty building, modern building, old building, super-ugly building :) ), with a sense of humor and understanding. after this nice introduction, oleg and i loaded our stuff into our room, and departed for the windy welly.

windy welly is the locals’ nickname for wellington as it is a very windy city. this proved to be true as we observed a girl struggle into marlyn monroe-sque poses in the battle with the wind. other than that, it wasn’t as bad as chicago (now THATS the windy city).

wellington felt in a way like a mix of ottawa and toronto, except … backwards. (since all the driving is still done on the lefthand side). ottawa because almost no one realizes wellingont is the capital and most people think that it is auckland (come to think of it – same thing with amsterdam and de haag. what do i have for countries with confusing capital locations?), and thus the downtown has mostly banks and government agencies. toronto because the people are very very stylish, the city is very modern looking, and general atmosphere of downtown reminded me of TO strongly.

we had coffee in a local cafe where the girl had blond hair and a proper mohawk. she was really cute and now i want to cut my hair like hers cause it was just AWESOME. yes, i’m still on a trip about my hair being so short :P you’d be too, its so awesome!

the walk was fun, but i got tired fairly soon as i caught a cold and generally felt very sick and tired. on the way back we filled up with gas and groceries, and evening was spent on awesome steak, awesome garlic mashed potatoes, and awesome wine (i totally spent almost all of the wine. as in, drank it.)

after dinner i watched some ocean waves, another firefly episode and finally some dreams.