Jess Wanders Off

 

 

Well, arriving in New Zealand is basically like arriving home.  I feel completely at home in this country and felt that way within 5 minutes after the plane first touched down in Auckland.  My flight from Nadi (Fiji) to Auckland was about 3.5 hours, Auckland to Wellington 45 minutes, and Wellington to Nelson (a city on the top of the South Island) about 35 minutes.

I love Wellington, I can already tell.  Even though I only saw it through the windows of a plane and the airport, I really love the city.  Lots of big forested hills with houses on top overlooking the sea.  I’ve already added Wellington to my list of cities I want to live in some day.  I can’t wait to get back and explore it.

From Wellington to Nelson I flew on this tiny 22-seater plane.  It was a little baby Air New Zealand plane with two engines on either side that made a horrible noise.  The whole time it was chugging along it was like, “I think I can…I think I can.”  I can honestly say it was the cutest plane I’ve ever been on in my life.

 

 

Nelson was rainy when I first got in, but still very pretty.  It’s right on the water and has huge green mountains.  I arrived close to 7pm so I took a taxi to my hostel, The Green Monkey.  It’s a very clean hostel and the owners are very friendly.  Unfortunately my first night’s sleep there wasn’t great because there was a guy snoring like crazy in the room.  Not just any old light snoring either — more like the volume of the two engines on the baby plane.  So that was uncomfortable.  Oh well, it’s a hostel — you get what you pay for, right?

December 17th I headed to Abel Tasman National Park, about 2 hours from Nelson.  It’s breathtakingly spectacular.  All I can say is wow, wow, WOW and I hope I can upload some pictures soon — although my pictures don’t really do it justice.

 

 

I took a hike from Marahau (the town near the park) into the actual park, to a little campsite called Anchorage.  The hike was about 4 hours and not very strenuous, but beautiful.  The weather was PHENOMENAL — I couldn’t have asked for a better day.  The walk was magical, with huge leafy ferns shading your pathway from the sun.  I’m sure they filmed at least some of the Lord of the Rings here — they had to have, it’s just so magical, you really do feel like you’re in some fantasy world.  Or the ancient time of the dinosaurs, maybe.  Here’s a pic of the ferns — didn’t come out very well, I’m afraid, but you get the idea.

 

 

Anchorage is beautiful.  It’s a giant cove with wonderful white sand beaches and blue-green water.  Once I arrived, very footsore and weary, I plunged straight into the water — and promptly caught hypothermia.  Well, close.  It’s pretty cold water considering how warm the day is.  So instead I opted for the more lazy route — laying on the beach and working on my tan.

 

 

Camping in Anchorage was uncomfortable, as the huts didn’t have separate beds, but instead, one giant mattress that people laid their sleeping bags on side-by-side.  So I had to strap on my “Adventurous Jessicah” hat and suck it up and sleep elbow-to-nose mashed in between two perfect strangers.  I was terrified I’d accidently knee someone in the groin or smack them in the face or worse, roll over and kiss on them, thinking they were someone else.  Hah!  Luckily, that didn’t happen — to my knowledge anyway.

 

 

 

The next day I hung around Anchorage, chatting with some awesome German girls and a couple from Wales, as well as a couple from Los Angeles.  There are a lot of Germans travelling here.  It seems like around every corner is a German voice.

 

 

Around 1 I got picked up by a water taxi and taken back to Marahau.  All I can say is, WOW.  The guy that worked on the water taxi had the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen in my life.  I think he was at least part Maori, or at the very least very tan, because aside from the startling blue eyes he was very dark, with both his skin and his hair. 

 

 

At around 3 I got back in the bus heading toward Nelson.  I’ll stay in Nelson tonight, back at the Green Monkey hostel.  Hopefully the snoring guy has moved on!

Here are some more of those beautiful ferns for ya.  New Zealand’s full of these.

 

 

 

Tomorrow I catch an early morning bus to Kaikoura, where I will go whale-watching.

Just a reminder for everybody, feel free to leave comments.  I love comments 🙂

 

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 4:15 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.