To Wellington

I got the REALLY early bus into Auckland to catch the train to Wellington to see more of central North Island. The train ride was 12 hours long over 681km going through the middle, downwards of the entire North Island.

It was really relaxing and very beautiful scenery, marred only by a family with four feral children (who really needed haircuts) whinging about lack of food and just generally moving about in my peripheral vision. To be fair they finally settled about 3 hours from the end; I think they might have eaten the smallest child or something and were letting it digest, or more likely they were just bored and sleeping.

12 hours was a bit too long really. The first 6 hours to National Park, where we had a nice stop, was really interesting; everything looked different to the sides of New Zealand I had seen before. Lush open plains, dramatic mountains, Jurrasic Park-esque tropical forests and fields upon fields of sheep and cows.



From National Park to Wellington it was more of the same. I had become hardened to the wonders passing me by and I got distracted by my new Nintendo DSi (bought to replace the one I lost on the plane, but a newer model... yay for gadgets) and music. At about the time the feral children were having their snooze I was pretty sick of montains, fields and sheep.


Arriving at Wellington I had a brief look around town (is is basically Auckland v2.0 - similar layout and a port city too) and got to my hotel with unlimited Internet. My hosts have a measly 3gig download limit so I am using this opportunity to download tonnes of TV shows I have missed. The Doctor Who special is 15 minutes from completing as I type this!

Tomorrow is a ferry to the South Island and a train to Christchurch where I am spending a couple of days.