Thursday, December 1, 2011

New Zealand: Days 8-9

I really enjoyed our time spent in Wellington. It's an extremely walkable city with lovely scenery, a terrific waterfront, and tons of shops and restaurants. They say Chicago is the windy city but it has nothing on Wellington. The wind there is unbelievable. It rained a bit during our stay and we learned there’s a reason why no one in Wellington uses umbrellas – they turn inside out in seconds! The rain blows sideways. Luckily, weather moves quickly in New Zealand and the dreary morning we experienced on our ninth day turned into an afternoon filled with blue skies.

After M met up for lunch with some NZ colleagues, we took an old cable car up to the botanical gardens. The view of the city was great and we could even see the cruise ship that was in port.

After walking around the gardens and cable car museum for a while, we needed a rest. I asked M to take a picture of me in that moment because I wanted to remember it forever - sitting in the sunshine, drinking a bevvy, doing nothing! Ahhh, I miss those days!

On our tenth day of vacation we got up early to catch the Interislander ferry, which took us from the North Island to the South Island. The ride took around four hours and once we were a bit closer to the South Island and had entered the sounds, the views were incredible. I stood in awe at the back of the boat for an hour, just taking in all the scenery.

I love how the sun shone on the water, making it sparkle.

As per usual, it was a tiny bit windy.

When we got off the ferry we drove to Kaikoura, which is a popular place to go whale watching. Ever since experiencing sea sickness multiple times in Thailand, I am petrified of boating in rough waters so I knew I didn’t want to go whale watching. Instead, we decided to go swimming with seals. Unfortunately, because of the water and weather conditions plus time constraints on our end, this plan didn’t work out. We did get to see a seal colony up close when we stopped along the side of the road at Ohau Point.

The baby seals were terribly cute! We got so close to them, only to read a sign later that said stay 10 metres away! I'm pretty sure we could have outrun them if we needed to.

In this small area shown below where the waterfall is, we counted over a dozen seals frolicking in the water. Ahh, the life of a seal. They looked like they were having so much fun, swimming and flipping through the water without a care in the world!

Up next: more Kaikoura and onto Ashburton!

2 comments:

  1. The water truly does look like it is sparkling in your pictures. You must be so happy that you took this trip. What an incredible experience.

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  2. Wonderful pictures Jill!

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