Wellington

Well we made it. It’s nearly 2300 but we’re here. We’re staying at the Hotel Wellington which is downtown. Everyone we had talked to today seemed to think that we wouldn’t be able to find a room anywhere in the city because of the Rugby game tomorrow but I was never worried. I kept telling Amy not to worry…that we had the luck of the Irish with us. Turns out, no luck was needed, I’m sure this place, and a bunch more hotels, have more than one room available tonight.

So since the last update (earlier today) we went to visit Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland on our way down to Wellington. Actually, before even getting there, we stopped so I could climb a very large hill that was along the highway. It was just calling out to me. :)

Wai-O-Tapu was very cool, but pretty stinky. I managed to finish off the first 512 MB card that I bought for the camera, and with the settings I had, that worked out to about 340 pictures up to that point. There are a bunch of pictures that I’ll be deleting though I’m sure. I’d like to find a place that can take that memory card and burn the pics onto a CD for me. In the meantime though, I’ve put the second 512 MB card into the camera. I’m happy to say, I didn’t notice any slowdown of the camera as the number of pictures stored went up. Way better than my old camera.

After Wai-O-Tapu we jumped into the Echo and started heading south. The scenery was amazing (as I expected) and while the daylight lasted, we enjoyed it very much. It gets dark here quite early, around 1730 or so but since it is winter, I guess that makes sense.

We stopped for supper at some little one horse town along the way. The woman at the cafe there told us that we had a good 4 to 4 and a half hours to go if we wanted to get to Wellington…that was around 1900, and since I’m typing this at 2253, you can see she was obviously wrong. It didn’t hurt that I found a few speedsters along the way to follow. The roads were just as fun as the trip up north, but there were a lot more straight and flat sections.

Anyways, I’m starting to feel pretty crappy again so I think it’ll be off to bed soon. We’ve got to catch the ferry tomorrow at 0830 so unfortunately we wont get to see any of Wellington at all. I guess we’ll see it from the back of the boat…

That’s it for now.