wellington

The bus to Wellington wasn’t until 3 in the afternoon, so we had time to lounge around in National Park.  We were meeting Tekla, from Alaska, in Welling.  She’s a friend of Ashlie’s.  They met in NYC and have been close ever since.  Who would have thought they would meet up in New Zealand?  

Tekla took us to her place and then we commenced a night of bar hopping.  I liked being in a city again, being able to hang out.  

She took us to a down to earth pub first.  It had recycled everything; tables, lamps, old suitcases...  Outside they had an old camper van that they converted into a bar and kitchen.  I got the local stout and just soaked in the vintage atmosphere.  

Next we went to a speakeasy and got some classily mixed drinks.  I got a hot spiced wine and the girls got cocktails.  It felt very swank, I wish I had dressed up a bit to go into that one, but it was fine. 

 The last place we went was a bit of dive.  It’s a club type place and the one place where you can get cheep beer, $9 a pitcher.  Not bad.  Here we met some 18 year olds.  They started talking to us and thought we were in uni.  This assumption made sense, it was college night, but also made us chuckle.  These guys were impressed by all the different parts of America we had came from and decided to show us some of the Kiwi culture.  So one of the guys starts taking off his shirt and then tell the other guys to join in to do the Haka.  Crazy!  

haka dancing? or just drunkenness...

We left shortly after to find some food.  We were successful in finding some pies. Yum!

The next day we decided to hike Mt. Victoria.  The hike was a bit difficult for Ashlie’s breathing and for my knee.  Turns out I injured it while hiking the Tongariro crossing.  Hmmm… imagine that?!  The view at the top was beautiful, but the hiking back down hurt me a lot.  

When we got to bottom it was bloody Mary time!  We took a stroll along the beach and then found a nice little restraint to tuck in to.  The place we found had great burgers and amazing Bloody Marys.  You can’t believe how hard it is to find a decent one outside of the United States.  

Tkla took some time to give us a little bit of a tour of  Wellington.  We got to see an awesome bus stop.
 

and the boardwalk.

this guy is suspended on hevy duty wire, but that doesn't stop it from being awesome.

 After this bit of fun Tekla had to leave us to go to work for a lesson on milk (she’s a bartender and barista), but that didn’t last long.  We were wandering, finding op shops when she called Ashlie to tell her that she was done.  That was great!  So we went beer tasting together.  The place was called Garage Project, and had some pretty awesome beers.  Plus they were in an old mechanic shop.  How cool is that!?

The Garage Project

Afterwords we sat down at a café and had a beer before Tekla had to go to work.  Ashlie and I ended up going to her restaurant, Ombra for dinner.  It was delicious!  It was like a tapas bar.  We had mushroom risotto and few other yummy things.

Ombra

The next day we had an early start to south island, so we had to go to bed early without Tekla (she was still working).  In the AM I knew we would wake her up at an ungodly hour, but it’s super hard to be quite with an 18 kilo bag.  We tried but didn’t manage to be quiet for Tekla but did get to say good bye. 

We arrived at the ferry terminal just in time.  They called us when we were 5 minutes away.  Apparently boarding a ferry is much different than boarding a bus.  Being early is a good idea.

Let's go South Island!