Day 6 - February 26

Kia ora,

We traveled to the capital city of Wellington today, and what a fun and quaint national capital it was. The city is surrounded by hills and sits at the bottom of the North Island. This was also our last day on the North Island.

After leaving our luggage at a hostel, I left with a couple others from the group to head to the Te Papa museum. On our way, we stopped at a cafe with outdoor seating and bean bag chairs in which you could sit all day. After forcing myself from the chair, I made my way to the bank for some NZ dollars and then went to the museum. This is the national museum, and is as large as three football fields. There was some interesting stuff there, including a giant squid.

I wanted to take the day off of hiking, and didn't even bother to put hiking shoes on today. That being said, I can't help myself when I know there is a fantastic lookout I can get to. Mt. Victoria had a fantastic lookout, and there were some steep climbs to get to. I found out later that I went up the steepest trail, because my route down was stretched out a bit more. The view from up top was incredible, and a photo will be coming most likely when I get home, because it doesn't work too well on this app.

Later in the afternoon, we rode the ferry across to the South Island, and it was much bigger than I anticipated. It was very scenic and windy as we navigated through the Cook Strait for 3 hours. I had a little fun, competitive conversation with a couple English girls along the ride as we were determining who said certain words the proper way. I am pretty sure I won.

We checked in at the hostel and I was finally able to get some laundry done. A group from the trip went to a bar for drinks and late night grub, and I eventually met up with them. I was out until about 1 and even busted a few moves on the dance floor. Six hours later, I am awake and finishing this entry. On to day 7.Read more