It was up early the next morning, after driving for 7 hours, to catch the ferry back to Wellington. It was an easy journey, made better by the on-board breakfast they had.
We docked in Wellington, once again a bright sunny day and made our way out of town to our motel in the nearby seaside town of Plimmerton.
We knew we had arrived a bit earlier than our check-in time, but as we had been traveling for almost a day we figured we might as well see if the room was ready.
When we arrived at reception we were not so much greeted, but had an encounter with the old man behind the counter. He was old, crotchety, rude, slightly overweight and wore suspenders and big coke bottle glasses. His unpleasant appearance was reflected in his personality. He was quite short and rude to us at check-in, although luckily our room was indeed ready which meant we could relax a good while before we had to head to the game that night. The room we stayed in was quite nice--save for the mean old reception man.
That night we took the train in Wellington to attend our one and only Rugby World Cup match of US versus Australia! We knew it would be rather one sided, as, lefts face it, rugby is not our sport.
Surprisingly, though, there were a fair few American fans in the stadium--I think they actually outnumbered the Aussies. I suspect most of them were not actually American--though I did hear a good number of American accents around us--but Kiwis who were coming to the game any would root for anyone but Australia. They got all dresses up, though, and it created a nice, festive atmosphere at the game--even though we got absolutely thrashed 5-67 Australia. The first 10 minutes were pretty exciting and then after that--flat.
But the costumes enough were worth the entry--my favorite was a group of 5 young guys, possible actually American, who showed up in full suits, carrying American flags, and all wearing Obama masks. It was really funny and I had to take a picture:
The other exciting moment came at the end of the game, when we were waiting for the game to finish but there were two injured players on the field so all the action had stopped. Some silly bloke thought this would be an excellent time to go streaking! So everyone on my end on the stadium caught the white, bare behind of some crazy dude--who was promptly swarmed, tackled, and covered by the numerous security guards standing between him and the field. I reckon he ran about 10 feet. I hope that $5,000 fine was worth it!
Despite the outcome, it was still fun to go to a game. The next day, John and I decided to spend the morning relaxing as we had dinner reservations that night in Wellington for John's birthday. We got a rude phone call from, once again, the mean reception man at around 11:45 in the morning wondering when John and I were going to leave the room because it needed to be serviced. As John and I only had the one extra night he told the man we didn't need any cleaning done, but the man rudely insisted saying he also needed to make sure we didn't break anything. John assured him we didn't and that we had already paid for the room, but said we would be going out to lunch around noon time. At about 5 past noon when we were about to leave we got ANOTHER rude call from the man as we hadn't left yet. We were extremely annoyed at this point and I had half a mind to call the property manager and complain--but we headed out to lunch and decided we would leave a bad review.
Our dinner in Wellington that night was delicious. We went to a cool, jazzy, mediterranean-style tapas placed called Duke Carvell's right off the main drag in downtown Welly--Cuba street. We enjoyed a delicious meal and a nice wine on our last night in Wellington.
The next morning we were meant to head to Tongariro and do the crossing the following day. But apparently, we didn't slaughter the proper sheep to appease the gods that cursed us with the Anti-Tongariro disease. Once again we had to cancel because there was still snow on the trail and they weren't doing any shuttles for independent trampers. You had to go with a guided group that had ice picks and crampons for the snow--and the cheapest tour was $155 per person--yeah, I don't think so.
So, unfortunately our Tongariro curse was not lifted this time around, but someday, somehow, we will conqueror the Tongariro!
So in it's place we made the short drive to Martinborough, the other wine area on the North Island to drink away our sorrows from losing the game and Tongariro. We only toured 4 wineries, but they were quite nice and we managed to leave with a nice bottle of Chardonnay.
Our last stop on our travels was a small detour to a small hill hear the eastern North Island coast that happens to be the longest place name in the world! I'll let the photos do all the spelling:
In Maori, the name means, "The hill on which Tamatea, the chief of great physical stature and renown, played a lament on his flute to the memory of his brother."
Yeah, no one else knows how to pronounce the Maori spelling either.
But it was a fun little stop on our way back to our old stomping grounds in Hawke's Bay!
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