my adventures in new zealand!: October 2011

Destination #2, Napier! After dragging our sleepy selves to the bus, we made our way towards Napier!

This actually involved passing through Palmerston North again, so we got to wave hello to home, and take pictures of lots of nice views.

Mauren and I scored i-max seats again, heck yes!

Pretty views.


Hills near Palmy.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Four hours later, we arrived in Napier!

I see the sea!

We checked into our hostel – the Stables Lodge – which was much smaller and homelier than our previous ones (we chose it because they advertised having fresh organic herbs and CATS! :D). Everything was horse themed, and adorably decorated.

Map of the city!

And a neat hand-tree of past guests.

Ze kitchen.

We got settled in… and played with cats!

Now that's one happy kitten.

Then we headed on down to the beach!

We all took pictures of this random person. Hahahaha.

The water was beautiful, and… we took lots of pictures (and enjoyed the feeling of sand between our toes, of course)!

Flower growing among the rocks.

Sticks and stones.

Neat driftwood.

Sand and sea!

Lovely.

Unfortunately the weather was a bit on the chilly side for swimming. Never too cold for Wisco, though!

Splashin' around.

Haha, what a goofball.

Refreshing!

Mauren collected a whole bunch of neat trinkets on the beach, including a pair of large rusty scissors covered in pebbles. Oooooooh.

Neato.

On our way back to the hostel, we passed the National Aquarium! It seemed kind of small (and we were on the cold and soggy side), so we opted to head back to the hostel and regroup.

After drying off and having a snack, we headed into town for some more exploring! We were presently surprised to find… the trees in the square all had knitted and crocheted cozies!

Funky critters.

Bright colors.

Crazy things!

Some were goofier than others. (:

I get the feeling it's watching me.... hmmm...

I can relate to this one.

We wandered on into a little park with a very big Morton Bay Fig tree!

Whatatree.

Then we wandered some more, and headed back to the hostel for dinner. YEAH PASTA! Woohoo! We also had an improvised apple-pear crumble for dessert, mmm.

After dinner... we had game night! We were going to attempt to play a board game... but we didn't. Instead, we played this super fun silly sentence drawing game I taught the crew! Many many laughs were had. (:

After dinner was all cleaned up, we headed back out on the town to wander around and find a beer.

Burrrrr.

OR A BURR?

Haha, nevermind.

We called it an early night because we had another early bus to catch in the morning, headed to… Taupo!

But not before silliness ensued. Cool poses, guys.

Napier was lovely, but unfortunately we didn’t have much time there… definitely planning on coming back for a weekend... when it’s warmer! (:
That’s all for now!

Ariel

Up next: Taupo

Midsemester break – first stop, Wellington!

The harbor! And perfect weather. (:

We took the bus down to Wellington Friday night, and met up with some friends who were taking a ferry to the South island the following morning.

i-max bus seats!

Midsemester break, cheers!

The first night we stayed in a hostel called Base Wellington – it was pretty nice, we didn’t spend much time there. since we headed the next morning to head to move our stuff to Lodge in the City.

Loved this sign. Hahaha.

Tipping the dishwasher. Always key. :D

Ate breakfast (oatmeal/porridge with apples, yum!), washed our dishes, and headed out.

All backpack-ed and ready to go!

I got really excited about this store – Brooklyn Bread & Bagels! Reppin'.

Passed some neat graffiti.

A giant cat made out of hands!

Zombie attack!

After we dropped off our things, we headed back out – to the waterfront! We had been a few weeks before (except for Wisco!), and it was as beautiful as ever.

Goofballs.

Taking pictures!

And in good form, we took lots and lots of pictures. (:

Ducks!

The water was so clear. (:

Including a whole bunch of the view in Wisco’s especially reflective sunglasses!

We were making him so self conscious, haha. But you can see me and Mauren in his sunglasses!

... and the water!

Then we headed into Te Papa for a quick run around the museum.

Existential pigeons.

Nice colors and reflections.

Haha, Te Papa made a pun. :P

And took a nice sun nap in a sandbox (pebbles, really).

Ahhhh. So zen.

Sunshine!

Robert being a dinosaur! (there were buried "dinosaur bones" in the sandbox)

On our way out, we stopped for some coffee, which naturally, inspired the males in the group to strip to their boxers and jump into the freezing cold water off a small building. Of course.

Mauren. Note the fact that she is warm, dry, and projects a sense of sanity.

Contrast: Wisco. Insane boy! Ahhhhh!

Flying. (:

Proof. Brrrrr.

Robert did it too. Excellent photobomb, Mauren.

We are so nice and dry. (:

(okaaay, so there were other people doing it too. but they were all pretty crazy.)

Cold and soggy, but happy (I'm sure the coffee helped). (:

We wandered a bit more, then stopped into a crafts market, which was really neat! There were tons of stands selling all kinds of handmade jewelry and clothes, and traditional jade and bone carvings. Also lots of hipsters. Fun! And a live band and delicious smelling food, mmmm.

We wandered around the city a bit more, then regrouped at our hostel… and wandered some more!

The sky. (:

Like this one.

Window into the city.

We came across a neat area by the waterfront that we hadn’t seen before built to look like a wooden ship, and a pyramid… and some other random things on sticks… yeah, not really sure what it was all about, haha. Still fun to walk around though!

More water!

The water was really pretty as the sun began to set.

We also found a neat skate park! Seems to be a pretty popular thing here.

Looking grunge.

Look at all these skater punks! :D

Then we picked up some groceries, headed back to the hostel, and got cooking! Day 1 of our two week pasta-fest! Yum.

Pasta time!

Ready for nomtown.

We were staying in a 6 person room at this hostel, so we had two roommates – who turned out to be two really interesting German guys who had been traveling around the world picking up temporary jobs (mostly fruit picking, sweet!).

The whole crew, up on the roof!

We also met our neighbors in the room next to ours – a group of Kiwis in Wellington to celebrate an 18th birthday (the legal drinking age here – so a pretty big one). They were completely insane, but really nice and fun. We hung out with them for a good part of the night.

Ahhhhhh! Vegetables everywhere!!

The following morning, we got up bright and early to head over to the Sunday market, for fruits and veggies galore!

We dropped our plunder back off at the hostel, and then set out on the day’s adventures – walking/hiking to the Mt. Victoria lookout!

At the base of the hike was a cool bus tunnel that reminded me and Mauren of the tunnel/hallway in Spirited Away. The boys got excited about it too because they could yell down it. Boys.

LETS MAKE LOUD NOISES!

Magic!

We passed through a playground, and a water spill later… we were off on our way!

Hahahaha.

The hike was really beautiful, there were tons of fantastic trees (really neat evergreens with cones growing all over the trunks… this seemed crazy to me).