Lake Taupo till Wellington

We drove on to Lake Taupo and asked at our chosen hostel, the Tiki Lodge, if there was room available. There was, but only in a seven-bedroom. Okay, so we took it. In the dorm we met an American from our old hostel. He had been the one who had originally given us the tip to come here, but we hadn’t known that he was going to return here. After having a little self-cooked lunch (pasta with fresh pesto, mmmmh) we hopped into the small spa behind the building and then took off to have a look at the local Huka falls, which is a long shallow waterfall, pushing itself violently through the rocks and then continuing calmly as Waikato river – the longest river in New Zealand. A few jokes appeared..hooker - huka…and there is a real estate guy that is called L.J.Hooker (not T.J.Hooker as the TV cop) who keeps popping up everywhere. For the next day Tina had planned a tandem-skydive for the next morning, but as the weather was vary it was postponed several times until we decided we would not wait an hour again and just went to the Public Library for some free wifi (I wanted to upload lots of photos), to some shops and to eat at Fuel Burgers with their absolutely stylish design (brochure and ‘doofer’ design – I’ll explain the latter in person to you if you’d like) and totally tasty burgers… 1/3 pounder with Dijon Mustard and pickles…yummy! Oh yeah, and free NZ-style fries because of the flyer we had brought. When we were back at the hostel Tina phoned the skydive-guys again and YES: this time the weather was fine and they would pick her up in 15 minutes. One last hug and off she went for a 15.000 feet-skydive. In the meantime I hopped into the spa again, took a little nap and was really excited what she would tell me. I myself wouldn’t mind to go on a skydive, I’ve been wanting to do that since I was 18, but I had expected it was bad for my knees and at this moment it was simply too much extra costs (500$ incl photo material + a video – and you would want that!). When Tina came back, she was absolutely thrilled and we watched the video together. It was fantastic and absolutely telling me: do this as well. There is a weight limit though with most NZ-skydivers and I am not sure anybody would accept me as I have not the slightest idea where my weight is right now. It is close to too much though. Since I started travelling it went up and down again – so no idea! And they weigh you with clothes and shoes of course, so it gets extra tricky. But I can do skydiving anywhere, it doesn’t have to be in NZ of course. The next day we said goodbye to Taupo and its lake. We hadn’t done much here, what we hadn’t done in the Bay of Islands (you could kayak, sail, take a boat trip etc) – so nothing overexciting new to do for us here. Hence we drove on and as we were on a slightly tight schedule (be on the South Island on Sunday at least!) we drove through to right before Wellington, which took us 5.5 hours. The landscape was changing constantly and we drove past heather and a pretty amazing snow covered mountain and of course lots of hills again, so the road bended a lot, but in the end we reached Plimmerton (20km north of Wellington) and its Moana Lodge. This was the absolute juwel in our hostel collection: a 5-star-hostel with a royal living room, an enormous kitchen and the softest silky bed spreads we had ever slept in. On top: it was on the beach with undisturbed views onto the bay. If you are ever in the area: check in here! After a quick washing of our clothes we went to the local Indian restaurant, Taj, another jewel. I had a soft chicken with mango sauce that would have suited a maharaja himself. Unfortunately the Moana Lodge is quite popular with everyone so we couldn’t stay another night as this was the weekend and so we had to check out in the morning and moved to a much more unpopular camping ground nearby into a small hut room, which seems to be bedbug-palace. We’ll see in the morning. Overday first of all we went to Wellington to take a peak. The skyline is very unspectacular and after parking our car we had a little walk along the oriental bay’s beachfront to the cinema “The Embassy”. This is THE movie theater where all Lord of the Rings and Hobbit-premieres have taken place and ALL the stars came to. This means I would be to sit in the same theater that had Cate Blanchett (I love her!), Peter Jackson, Orlando Bloom (love him as well!) and all the other stars at the very same time and several times. My god – I might have sat on the same toilet as Cate Blanchett… I know it’s silly, but it is a lovely Art Deco toilet. ;-) What I didn’t mention is of course: Tina and I had tried to see “The Hobbit”, part three, for 4 weeks now and it was nowhere on anymore, so we were absolutely thrilled that it was still running in Wellington and then in this particular movie theater! The theater featured 3 original costumes from “The Hobbit” as well: the clothes of Bifor, Bofur and Bombur, which we did have a look at of course. Later on we saw two other elf costumes in the Museum Te Papa as well. But first we had a coffee at the “Embassy”, bought our tickets for the afternoon and then strolled a little through the city center, had a lunch and then explored the famous museum Te Papa, a typical “explore NZ”-museum. It was absolutely nice but the displayed things seemed to have no order most of the time and it was hard to figure out why topic 1 was next to topic 2, but well… We saw a blue whale-skeleton (not my thing…oooh, I didn’t feel well walking underneath it), were in an earthquake-shook hut and saw lots of Maori cultural things such as boats, weapons and huts. After this we returned to our movie theater and took a seat in the absolutely boutique and glamorous movie theater. The screen was enormous and the 3D was perfect, so we had 3 enjoyable film-hours before getting out again and walking back to our car. We said our goodbyes to Wellington and drove off to the campsite and our hut, had a self-cooked dinner (it’s hard if they don’t provide much cooking gear, but fortunately we had everything necessary from our own camping experiences. As there wasn’t much to enjoy on the site we quickly went to sleep as we had also to catch a quite early ferry over to the South Island in the morning. Very early means: be there at 9.30 am (departure at 10.30 am), but as we already are having trouble leaving a hostel at check-out time which is always at 10 am this really means EARLY. In spite of being in a hurry we had an extended breakfast as usual, chatting away and sipping our coffee. Driving to the ferry and waiting in the row was not that spectacular but then we drove onto the raildeck, which usually contains freight train wagons. Everything looked very old fashioned and wooden down here, cool. But no train wagons of course, just the rails. We spend a lot of time on board to prepare ourselves for the South Island, mainly to avoid any stress on our trip because of too extended stays at one place. Tina had a few ideas what to do at some places where I hadn’t, simply because I hadn’t read anything about New Zealand before I came here. The only thing that I did not want to miss was Kaikoura a short way down on the Eastcoast, as a host couple had told us about their experience with swimming with dolphins there. I am still not sure if I would do that, as they are of course friendly but still might remind me of sharks or whales while I am swimming in the deep sea and I wouldn’t want a heart attack in the middle of the ocean. We’ll see about it.