Day 154: Merry Kiwi Christmas!

One thing that I get asked a lot -- and that I wondered about prior to getting here -- was what you do for Christmas if its in summer?

The answer is, apparently, bum around in beautiful weather and celebrate by jumping into Wellington Harbour.

In slightly more detail:

We woke up in our private ensuite room (thank you, hostel) to the sunlight pouring in through the windows, illuminating everything in that distinctly summer light. We could see the bright blue of the sky reflecting in the nearby harbour, and it just felt like a beautiful day.

To kick off the day, we skyped our family back home, to wish each other Merry Christmas and Merry Christmas Eve, depending on the time zone. So much had been happening that it felt like the first time in ages that we'd been able to connect with our families, and we took our time catching up.

To top off the already excellent start, we went downstairs to find that the hostel staff was pouring champagne and heating mince pies for a Christmas brunch. Delightful!

The four of us ate a kebab lunch on Wellington Harbour, looking out across the insane blue waters. We went to Te Papa for a bit, and Claire and I introduced the siblings to the joys of Bush City. The museum closed early for Christmas, so the tour ended early.

Claire and I, since coming to Wellington, have been meaning to jump off the harbour. It's a Thing, of sorts, where fully clothed people will launch off the docks into Wellington Harbour.

Contemplating with Solace in the Wind

Claire and I decided to do it, at long last, and we took off our shoes, stood at the edge of the pier, and braced ourselves. Correction: Claire stood at the edge of the pier and just plunged off the end. I stood at the edge, quaking, before taking the leap. (We also cheated slightly by not jumping off at the traditional place. I am afraid I am a coward and would not have been able to walk off the edge of a plank.)

The water wasn't cold, but it was shockingly salty. That meant that despite the fifteen foot jump, the water was so buoyant that it felt like I was being hurtled upwards towards the surface. On the other hand, it also meant that every time my sister, peering over the edge, asked how it was, I tasted salt against my lips and sputtered more than I would have normally.

My sister decided that she wanted to jump, so Claire and I both took another dive.

My brother, either boring or not crazy, opted to play photographer.

Anyhow, we went back to the hostel to change out of our sopping, salt-crusted clothes, then decided to take a leisurely walk through the Botanic Gardens. The rose gardens were in full bloom, and we spent a good while smelling the flowers and enjoying the sun.

Our new friends enjoying the gardens

Most places in Wellington were closed for dinner, so we ended up dining at a Chinese restaurant on Courtenay Place. It was a bit disconcerting to have Chinese for Christmas dinner, but it was delicious and left no one wanting.

To ease off the food, we walked around Wellington and introduced my siblings to the town. The evening ended under the Telecom Tree (thank you, branding), and had our picture taken (and put up on the company's Flickr. Strange.).

All in all, a good Christmas.

Day 153: An unusual Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eve was mostly a driving day. My sister was a bit tired, so her sister weather magic failed to completely dispel the clouds. Despite this, we managed to squeeze in zorbing at Rotorua, lunch at Kuirau Park (in the midst of geysers, mud pools, and sulfurous hot pools), ice cream by Lake Taupo, a sunset scenic route around the volcanic Mt Raupehu, then straight shot it to Wellington just in time for Christmas.

675 kilometers, 8.5 hours of driving, one day. Merry Christmas Eve. :)

Kuirau Park in Rotorua

Rata trees in bloom

(Pohutukawa, or, the New Zealand Christmas Tree)

Lake Taupo

Mt Raupehu

Bonus picture: Santa in the boot, wishing all of the people behind us a merry Christmas.

Zigfrond and Santa at Coromandel

Day 152: Waitomo Caves, Otorohanga, Marokopa Falls

For our Waitomo adventures, we ended up driving over to the place with the terrifying dead-body-on-a-fence,-oh-wait,-it's-just-a-TERRIFYING-WETSUIT,-THANKS-GUYS, which was much closer to the hostel in the light of day than when illuminated by high beam. Upon arriving, we were then transferred to a hilariously awful van, which then took us up some hills, past some sheep, through PRIVATE PROPERTY fences, and then finally dumped us at a strange little shack, wherein a tiny lady forced us into wetsuits and gumboots.

Then, we clomped our way down to the caves, probably more attractive than any humans have the right to be.

The day began with a 27 meter abseil down into the caves. The thing about caves that I always tend to forget is that they are not particularly glamourous from the outside. In this case, the cave system that we would be exploring looked like a giant crack in the world, surrounded by lush furns and, a little further out, farmland.

That being said, as we each abseiled down, the view changed dramatically. There was a point where you could look straight ahead and see the light coming down into the cave in almost tangible lines. Between the high arching walls of the cavern and the tinted light, it looked like a cathedral.

Granted, then you landed in shin deep water, and the solemnity was a tad lost.

As our group of six finally made it over, we learned that our timing was, yet again, amazing. The day before, some tours had been canceled because of the recent rains. Apparently some of the caves had flooded and it was unsafe for groups to go in. For us, it meant that the waters were about twice as high as they normally were, and the currents much faster. There were points where I was sure that my feet were going to be kicked out from beneath me, and it really colored the experience in a way that calm waters wouldn't. I do not tend towards wild adventuring, so wading through the cold and rapid water and pressing up against the sharp limestone was genuinely enlightening.

For the most part, I am not sure if I would pick up spelunking as a relaxing weekend activity, but we did get to see things that made me understand, at least in part, why someone would strap a lamp to their head and explore the dark unknown.

One of those things were the glow worm caves, which were genuinely magical. We were told to turn off our headlamps, and, one by one, we clicked them off until the only source of light was the starscape of glowworms above us. It's hard to describe the way bioluminescence looks, the difference between that and stars, that and ordinary light. Up close, they are tiny, the entire span of their movement the length of a match, but en masse they are so bright. Countless little larvae, living their dark little lives.

We ended up doing a lot of everything while down there, exploring the caves, climbing through some pretty nervewrackingly tight spots, black water rafting (which is essentially riding an inner tube down the subterranean rapids), and then ending the day with a 20m rock climb back out of the cave.

After the day's adventures, we decided to go to the nearby town of Otorohanga for a late midafternoon meal at the Thirsty Weta. Yum.

An unfortunate encounter with the kiwi of Otorohanga

Claire and I also decided that we needed to introduce my siblings to some delicious New Zealand ice cream and bought a tub of Rush Munro's feijoa ice cream. This was, in theory, an excellent idea. However, when put in conjunction with our plan to go to the gorgeous Marokopa Falls down the road, it resulted in a strange and probably permanent association of flavour and place. We neglected to take into consideration how soft the ice cream was and how quickly it melts in the heat, so everyone in Team Zigfrond was eating spoonfuls of ice cream as we hurtled down the road towards the Falls. Just thinking back to the falls fills me with a phantom taste of feijoa and sense memory of the awkwardness of being spoonfed melty ice cream while driving. I am happy to report, though, that both the falls and the ice cream lived up to expectations. (In all seriousness, the falls were gorgeous. This country really does spectacular scenery.)

Gorgeous. And the falls aren't bad either.

By the end of the day, we were all pretty tired and came back to the hostel for an evening of twilight trampolining and dinner.

Day 151: A Day of Beaches

Yesterday, we had tentatively planned to do a little exploring in the remote stretches of the far north of the Coromandel Peninsula, but the timing didn't quite work out. Instead, we drove along the east side of the peninsula on the way to Hot Water Beach.

Santa hitching a ride

(courtesy of Pierre and Gisele! :D )

Every single moment of the drive was gorgeous. We ended up taking a delightfully odd detour to Opito Bay, which rewarded us with a remote beach with sparkling white sands and postcard blue waters. To get there, though, we took an unsealed gravel road off the main highway, through some steep logging paths, then downhill towards some more gravel. After a slightly alarming downhill drive, we ended up hitting sealed road again and reached what must be some variant of a resort town. Rising from the gravel dust were a series of really interesting houses, completely at odds with other houses we've seen in New Zealand and, more relevantly, the stretch of uninhabited land around it.

We had heard that there was a beach somewhere around there, so we ended up driving in a few confused circles, before asking someone if the set of steps over the fence would lead us to the beach. We parked the faithful (and now extremely dusty) Zigfrond, hopped the fence, and made our way to a beach straight out of a magazine.

I have no pictures of the beach, but I assure you that it was phenomenal. The only problem was that there was -- gasp -- another family on the beach.

Seeing the other family, far down the other side of the beach, made me realize how spoiled for land New Zealand has made me. They were tiny little blobs in the distance and yet I felt almost affronted that other people dared to be on what was obviously my beach. What were they even doing there? Couldn't they find some other beach? (And I'm sure they felt the same about us interlopers.) It was one of those ludicrous moments where I had to laugh about how absurd it was.

In either case, we sat at the edge of those sparkling waters, ate lunch, and just let the waters lap over our feet.

Aftewards, we went to Hot Water Beach, a singular little location where hot springs are located right on the beach and you can dig yourself a hot pool. My sister had been excited about this, so I had looked up the tides literally months before, and we ended up arriving at the perfect time. (I'm not going to lie; a portion of the itinerary was actually planned around low tide on Coromandel.)

I honestly wasn't sure what I expected from the Hot Water Beaches. I'd heard that it could get really crowded and really busy, so I was braced for massive swarms of people and a beach of absolute madness. Then, as I remembered later, we are in New Zealand and "really crowded" and "really busy" take on a much different meaning. The beach was, for the most part, entirely empty, except for a small stretch of sand where you'd see maybe a few dozen people. This was, shockingly, where the hot water was.

Nope, no hot water here

The process of digging a pool is actually pretty interesting. The general location of the springs isn't difficult to find, but the specifics are a bit more difficult. In my case, I walked between pools until I found a spot where my feet were toasty, took another step and then did a flying leap backwards as I realized that the water was really hot. (Apparently the water can get up to 60 degrees Celsius or 140 degrees Fahrenheit.) The trick is to find those hot spots, then pick out a place a little bit further down so the hot water will trickle down, combine with the cooler beach water, and then fill up your personalized hot tub.

We didn't have a shovel or a spade, nor did we care to rent one, but we managed to catch some other people who decided to leave early. We snagged their half-dug pool and then settled in, scooping it wider with our hands. At various points, the water would get too hot or cold, so we would build a sand dam to block off the hot water or break it down to bring more in. It was, needless to say, a really sweet way to spend an afternoon.

As the day went on, the tide started to come in, and I was really excited to have a wave wash over our tub. It turns out that our tub was apparently designed for maximum spa time and was a bit too high up the beach for the water to reach, so I scooted down until I could feel the hot spring water below me and the cool ocean waves lapping up. So, so neat.

Once we got off the beach (and reapplied sun block for umpteenth time), we ended up driving a little further down to visit to Cathedral Cove. It was a pleasant walk from Hahei Beach, made more pleasant by some cafe indulgences. Between the four of us, we had a feijoa smoothie, a flat white, and a chai latte. Mmm.

Cathedral Cove, apparently featured in Prince Caspian, is one of New Zealand's ridiculously scenic areas. It's located in a marine reserve and has these incredible beaches hidden away.

View from Cathedral Cove

I wish we could have spent more time in Coromandel as it was so beautiful, but we were on a schedule and had to be in Waitomo for a caving adventure the next day. We did a delicious dinner in Thames before heading down to Waitomo.

By then, nightfall was well on its way, and I was pleased to discover that while New Zealand doesn't have streetlights on rural roads it is extremely well signposted. It occurred to me on the road that Claire and I hadn't done much driving at night, outside of Wellington and familiar ground, and the bright reflector strips lining the frequently hilly and twisting roads were welcome.

We drove through Paeroa, the P part of the World Famous in New Zealand L&P beverage, Hamilton, and finally arrived in Waitomo at around midnight.

As an aside, searching for the YHA Waitomo was possibly the scariest thing I've ever done. My printouts seemed to indicate that the hostel was right off the main road, but that was apparently not accurate. Claire and I crept along at a snail's pace peering at all possible signs for an address or some indication of how far down we needed to go. Keep in mind that Waitomo isn't actually a town, so much as a place where caves are, and it was pretty intense. That being said, we also passed a sign with what looked like a person hanging from the fence. It took us a heart attack's moment to realize that it wasn't actually a real person, but a wetsuit with boots and a hat.

We did find it, though, and we settled in to prepare for tomorrow's adventure of abseiling, spelunking, black water rafting, and rock climbing. Phew!

Day 150: One Tree Hill (redux) and on the road to Coromandel

My sister arrived in Auckland!

Unlike for my brother, we were able to pick her up at the airport, a surprisingly quick and easy trip. (At least that's how it felt on this end. I'm sure that the full day of travel time was less easy on her part.) Now, I would like to mention here that I'd been warning my sister about the not-so-great weather, but she had been assuring me with full confidence that she'd bring the sun. Who am I to be skeptical? As we walked back to our faithful Zigfrond, the clouds hovering over Auckland parted and let loose good old New Zealand sun.

(To give you a sense of how grey it's been, my brother saw the Sky Tower and startled. "I didn't even see it last time!")

In our search for a good vegetarian lunch, Claire and I actually ended up coming across New Flavour, the place that Craig, our couch surfing friend, had taken us for vegan dumplings. Sadly, it was closed. Instead, we dragged the siblings over to a Vietnamese restaurant that our hostelkeep had recommended, and we feasted on pho and good times.

Rather than walk through the relatively uninteresting Auckland CBD, Claire and I made the executive decision to head over to One Tree Hill for a leisurely walk. It was a beautiful crisp day and we ate oranges at the top of the hill, baa-ing at the sheep and maa-ing at the goats.

Dramatic sheep.

We also rolled down the hill at Cornwall Park, a surprisingly intense and exhilarating ride.

Then, to keep my jet-lagged sister on her toes, we whisked her away to Coromandel. The drive out of the city was much more beautiful than the drive in, due to the sun (thank you, sister weather magic!) and the fact that we were heading out towards open country.

On the Coromandel Peninsula, water just spread out to our left and we paused for some Magnum GOLD?!s to eat along the waterfront.

Stereoscopic jumping on the beach

We skipped rocks for a little while along the beach before heading to Coromandel Town. There, we got settled in a sweet little private room. For dinner, Claire had a hankering and we stopped by a fish and chip shop to grab some luscious fresh fish. A delicious way to end the day.

Evening in Coromandel Town

Day 148: Huka Falls, then the Hidden Valley, Orakei Korako

We planned to go to Hobbiton today, but due to a continuation of grey weather, we opted to skip it and check out other places around Taupo before heading up to Auckland.

Huka Falls is just a little way out from Lake Taupo (past the prawn farm) and it's about a five minute walk from the little carpark. This picture hardly does justice to the water's brilliant shade of blue. Unbelievable.

Since we had a change of plans, we ended up taking a slight detour to Orakei Korako, the Hidden Valley. If you ever make your way down to Orakei Korako, be warned that it is quite hidden. We ended up driving up and down a stretch of road for a little while, trying to find the road that would lead us there. Nonetheless, we managed it eventually and got to visit a tremendously neat geothermal area.

The whole area around Lake Taupo is a geothermal hotspot (see also: our visit to thermal pools last night), and there are a surprising amount of little nooks and crannies with some activity. To get to this place, you take a detour off the main motorway and enjoy a meandering tour of farmland and pine forests before reaching a little spot off the Waikato river.

Orakei Korako is actually on the opposite bank, so to get to the area itself, you need to take a little jetty boat over. Once you do, it's like you step into another world.

View of the Golden Fleece Terrace

We were there on yet another grey and gloomy day, but that really just added to the atmosphere of the place. There were plumes of smoke or steam coming off of the Golden Fleece Terrace and everything just seemed to slow down when we were there.

Emerald Terrace

As we walked around, I had just sense a sense of how raw this country is. New Zealand is, obviously, not known for its long-established cities or its thriving metropolitan scenes. It's very much a country of wilderness, and sometimes we would come across places that felt like they could have been there for millenia.

The fauna around the entire area felt like something out of the prehistoric age. There were unsettlingly bright palm trees peeking out of the dense vegetation, massive ferns. The steps and the aged signs and all of the signs of human involvement were conspicuous and looked out of step with the rest of the place.

Artist's Palette

Apparently, despite the seemingly pristine beauty of the place, there has been quite a bit of the human hand involved. In 1961, people built a dam that raised the level of the Waikato River and flooded a good portion of the active geothermal areas. In either case, what's left is really remarkable.

In the grey drizzle, everything seemed subdued and the entire world felt muted. I imagine that on a sunny day the colours of the place must be genuinely unearthly.

Sometimes all you can do is look at the country and think, Oh New Zealand.

Day 147: MOUNT DOOM

While we've been in New Zealand, Claire and I have actually not sought out any Lord of the Rings settings, and, for two ex-fanatics, have been remarkably blase about living in Middle Earth. However, with my brother in tow, we decided that we would have to make our way to Mordor. Or, in that silly English tongue, Tongariro National Park.

Today, we learned that one does not simply walk into Mordor.

(insert joke here)

One might say that one wakes up to a grey morning, dons many layers of wet weather gear and wool, drives through a blanket of fog and cloud, climbs many steep stairs in pouring rain, hears an impending thunderstorm, and then decides that destroying the One Ring isn't worth it and heads back to relax in some heated pools.

(Little known fact: That part was cut from the books.)

Anyhow, we woke up today to a grey morning and not the stealth sunny day that we had all been hoping for. Rather than just skip the crossing, we followed the advice of Ian, our good hostel keep, as well as a few others who had made the walk in the previous days and decided to go on until we couldn't.

Driving to Mangetata gave us a hint of what the weather was going to be like. The forests we drove through were tall and dark and the tops were lost to fog. It looked positively gothic. (Our windshield wipers did their level best to contribute, SKREE SKREE SKREE-ing with Psycho-esque verve.)

By the time we got to the start of the track, the weather had cleared up enough to alternate patches of almost-sun with drizzle, and I was saying things like, "Oh, this isn't too bad, guys! We can totally do this!" Of course, just as we hit the first ascent (as prefaced by many WARNING! and CAUTION! and ADVISORY! signs), the clouds gathered and waited to release buckets of rain at the opportune moment.

As we climbed, I think we were actually in the midst of the low hanging clouds because we were enveloped in white. The visibility of the path seemed more or less normal until you looked forward and saw that each dip and bend seemed to lead into nothing.

Is that the edge of a cliff? No, just a turn in the road.

Anyhow, we made it up to the Red Crater, which was a truly bizarre experience. The land itself was really sparse and flat, and it felt like we were in some combination of the moon and the American Southwest. Combine that with the fact that we were in the center of a crater in the middle of white clouds, and it was just this almost eerie sensation of isolation.

The only cure for isolation is more banana

At this point, all we had to do was climb one more uphill section, and then the rest would be downhill. However, as Claire started to pick out a path through the slippery and steep rock slope, the rain began to pick up again, slapping our raincoats as if to mock our optimism. As we made it about halfway up, thunder started to rumble in the distance and I began to have some serious reservations.

We ended up turning back shortly after, because the rain didn't seem to want to stop and I am a wet blanket. (And, in all seriousness, because I didn't want to test the three of us with a pretty rough uphill climb in a thunderstorm.)

As we turned back, it felt like we made the right choice because it began to pour rain. I am pretty sure that if I stood under a shower fully dressed and then jumped into a swimming pool, I could not have gotten wetter. Rainwater was streaming around our feet, flooding the little waterways they carved around the steps, and I could feel my socks squelching in my (waterproof) shoes. It was truly epic.

Of course, by the time we returned to the springs at the valley, the sun was starting to peek out and we ended up having a nice little picnic on the rocks.

Would you believe the hand holding the camera was raisin-y with wet?

The final walk back to the car was absolutely unbelievable, with beautiful skies and only the lightest sprinkle of oh-you! rain. We peeled off our layers to enjoy the sun, arranging them carefully in the car to avoid excessive puddles, and then took our leisurely way back to Turangi.

Oh, and then we nearly ran out of gas.

But anyway, we eventually got back to the hostel, our bodies aching and wet, and then Ian, our good hostel-keep, told us about the local thermal pools. We ended up trotting (or limping) or way over there and finished off the day soaking in some hot pools. That was pretty neat, especially since it started to rain and we had the dual combination of hot water and cool rain.

(And even in the pools, I'm pretty sure I wasn't as wet as I was coming down the mountain.)

And that was our Tongariro adventure! I confess, I was a bit bummed that we weren't able to do the whole walk, but I figure the sheer insanity of hurtling down a mountain in a thunderstorm more than balances it out.

Day 146: Onward, ho!

Claire and I spent the morning cleaning and scrubbing and doing general last minutely things. When we finally finished up, I snapped a few last pictures of our humble J'ville house, and then we went to our heavily loaded car to drive forward to the future.

It was all very momentous and exciting.

Closing the last locked door, or, who-knew-we-would-regret-this-thirty-seconds-later?

Unfortunately, as I stood at the driver's side of our car, I asked Claire if she had the car keys. This was only unfortunate because she looked blank, I had no idea where the keys were, and if we had left them in the house, well, all the doors were locked. Oops. We did a few futile loops of the house (sorry thieves and irresponsible movers, it turns out Claire is a very thorough door-locker and window-shut-er), then looked despairingly at Zigfrond, loaded down with a flat's worth of stuff.

It turns out the key was, unpredictably enough, in my bag the whole time! Ha! Ha! Ha! What a lark!

With that preliminary bout of heart attack out of the way, off we went to Wellington for our last round of errands and then up to Turangi to meet up with my brother.

We met him (about an hour and a half after we had planned to-- Sorry about that, brother mine!) at the Turangi i-Site where we found out that the grey weather that has been chasing us through the island was here to stay. I was hoping that the giant sodden blanket of clouds would miraculously clear in time for us to do the Tongariro Crossing, but the information lady seemed quite confident that that would not be the case. She told us the weather was predicted to be dismal and grey, with gusts of wind reaching 40 km/hr at the top of the mountain. She did not recommend doing the crossing tomorrow.

Ho hum, we thought, exchanging glances. As was our custom, we thanked her and decided to play it by ear.

Regardless of impending weather, it was exciting to be there: in Turangi with my brother and my most frondest of fronds, starting off on what promised to be an eventful adventure.

On the road!

Day 145: Brother, Reporting In! (December 16)

In a way, today is the day that the past few weeks and months have been leading up to. My brother was due to arrive in Auckland in the morning, and that would mark the start of our grand adventures.

Claire and I cleaned like fiends while I waited impatiently for him to call me. We'd discussed all of his hostel arrangements and pretty much every step between getting off the plane and meeting him in Turangi the next day, but there is something much more real about having your younger brother be out of touch, rocketing towards you in a giant metal tube with wings.

Eventually, about on schedule, he got in touch with me, and then I re-learned how incredible modern technology is. Within minutes, and across four cities and two hemispheres, my entire family had been notified that my brother had successfully made it to Auckland.

Once that was confirmed, I focused the rest of my attention on getting the house in order. Our landlady was ever accommodating and failed to get us help in moving furniture into the basement, so Claire and I spent the day hauling around a flat's worth of stuff. We are tetris masters, though, and managed to squeeze quite a lot of stuff into the tiny room in the basement allotted to storage. By the end of the day, I was a tad grumpy and was making crazy eyes at the world, but things were more or less in shape for us to go.

For our last dinner in Johnsonville, we had no tables nor chairs, so we ate in style: sitting cross-legged around a spread-out newspaper.

I will say this, though: it was delicious.

Day 143: Goodbye, Dolly :(

The past few days have been pretty intense, between me working on grad school applications and finalizing plans for my siblings to visit and the both of us sorting out house-business.

Sadly, one thing that we had to do to wrap up our time in Johnsonville was to pass Dolly along to someone who could take care of her.

Dolly, our cat for the past four and a half months, had originally been a stray who adopted 14A as her home. Neither our landlady nor our roommates had any particular claim to her, and since neither of them would be around, they had to find someone who could take care of her. (Well, when we first asked our landlady about Dolly's fate, she made a roundabout statement that went something like, "She came to us from the street, and she may have to return to where she came from." Thank you, landlady.) We ended up finding a lovely lady named Sandra who stepped up to the plate.

In either case, when it came time for Dolly to go, Sandra came with a little disposable cat carrier made of cardboard. I held Dolly for as long as she would let me and then Sandra swiftly-- and surprisingly skillfully-- crammed her into the cardboard box until all that was left was a box of extreme disgruntlement and Dolly's pink little nose pressing up against an air hole.

That, more than anything else, really struck me.

Anyway, Dolly was driven off to her new home just a few streets away, and 14A was, for once, catless and quiet.

One of many photos taken during one of my frequent cat-breaks

Day 140: A completely gratuitous gingerbread cookie post

Peargiraffe, catbanana, and the original dogmuffin

(Top Hat Man and Zigfrond in the background)

Sorry, dude.

The collected works.

Day 133: First glimpse of South Island

After the success of our Thanksgiving, our third cohost invited us out to join him for an afternoon along the southern coast of North Island. We'd planned for a few more friends to come, especially since we are starting to really realize what it means to leave Wellington. The whole crew wasn't able to make it, but a few of us made a day of it. We did a short walk from Owhiro Bay to the Red Rocks, then picnicked along a stretch of mossy rocks with our first glimpse of South Island peeking over the horizon. There were no seals at the seal colony, as they'd apparently left a few days or weeks before, but the day was so beautiful that I don't think any of us could be bothered to care much.

From our picnic vantage point, we could see the distant line of the Marlborough Sounds of South Island.

I felt a bit strange, seeing how close and how far South Island is. In a way, it symbolized some bisection of our New Zealand travels, a departure from the comfortable now. We have carved out a niche in Wellington with our friends and flat and cat. We've gotten jobs and made friends and have our weekly traditions. But in a few weeks, my siblings will visit and Claire and I will launch out onto a roadtrip with no definite end. We've been gearing up for the end of our time in Wellington, but it's been mostly focused on the things we need to finish and do and experience, and not the endless possibility stretched out before us.

South Island, so soon!