Days 56-63: Christmas In Wellington

We took a detour to spend Christmas in Wellington, the capitol city of New Zealand. There's quite a bit to do there, and we welcomed all the distractions around the holidays.

I'm waaay behind on blog posts, so I'll try to keep this one short and sweet.


Liz took a bus from Te Kuiti, and I got on in Taumarunui, and we headed all the way to the bottom of the north island. Wellington is a pretty nice city, right on a large harbor, with good public transit and a lot of free museums. Perfect for a pair of carless trampers on a budget.

We were met at the bus by Stan, our first host, who we found on AirBnB. He lives with his wife, Carol, across the harbor, in Eastbourne. They were great hosts, and we spent two nights with them, as well as a great Christmas lunch bbq (a totally foreign concept to us, hailing from the northern hemisphere).


Amazing sunset over the harbor from Eastbourne

We took the ferry across the harbor to explore downtown Wellington on one of the days. Downtown Wellington is beautiful, and we enjoyed just wandering around the waterfront for a while. We spent quite a bit of time at the Te Papa national museum, and probably didn't even see half of it. Pretty impressive. We also grabbed a beer in an outdoor beer garden on the harbor. Hard to beat an lazy afternoon beer in the sun by the water.


Downtown Wellington had all sorts of interesting sights


Like big wooden fish over the sidewalk


Liz was pleased to find a dinosaur exhibit at the Te Papa


There was also a cool wearable art exhibit


Beer in the harbor - with my beard getting out of control, outdoor seating is becoming our only option

After that, we spent the next five nights with Angela and Nik. Angela is Stan's daughter's best friend, and Stan introduced us. They just moved into a very nice house in August, and were lots of fun to hang out with. Nik is also a software engineer, and we swapped a few war stories. We got to join in on pre-football (American translation: soccer) pub crawl, and a pre Christmas friend reunion. We also went to see The Hobbit, part 2 (spoiler alert: it was not good) at a fancy theater used for the NZ premier, and read quite a few more books. It was a great place to stay, and we're really happy they were willing to host us, especially over the crazy Christmas week.


Lots of new friends, complete with Santa hats

We spent Christmas afternoon back at Stan & Carol's for a delicious bbq. We had many tasty dishes, including mussels, roasted lamb, whitefish cooked in banana leaves, and pavlova (a big meringue covered in whipped cream and fruit). Afterward, we headed over to a wharf, where people were leaping off into the harbor - a Christmas tradition.


Christmas BBQ!


Liz, helping to prepare the pavlova


Tons of people at the wharf


Look closely - the pole he's leaping from is horrified

We also met Stan's three kids, all around our age - Emily, Jon, and Tom, who all had pretty interesting stories. It was great to have found a welcoming surrogate family for Christmas day, when we were both missing our families back home quite a bit.


Tom, the summer Santa

I wish I had more time to devote to writing about all the great people we met and stayed with! They were all really friendly and helpful, and we were happy to have met them and spent the holidays with them. But, by the time Christmas rolled around, we'd been waiting for almost exactly a month to get back on the trail. It was time to get back to it. We packed up on the night of Boxing Day for an early bus ride the next day up to Ohakune. There we'll meet up with the Brits, Hayden (James' brother in law), Ben, Lance, and Edwina (Lance's partner) for our five day canoe trip!