This morning I had the opportunity to spend a few more hours rafting/kayaking on the Rangitikei River with the other group, but I was a bit tired of being on the water and chose to sit out. I did help the rafting company by driving one of their vans back to the raft shop, which was an interesting experience since it was my first time driving on the left side of the road. It took a minute or two to get adjusted to it and the blinker being on the opposite side, but it wasn't to hard and was actually fun. After everyone got back from the rafting, we drove a couple hours to Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. We were staying in a hostel. This was the first hostel that I've stayed in, and it was a lot nicer than I had predicted. It had a lot of nice colorful furniture to lounge in as well as two large kitchen areas, a TV and video room, computer area, and laundry facilities. Of course, anything will seem nice after camping for a while, but it was very nice. Laundry was my most immediate concern because I hadn't washed any clothes since I arrived, so you can probably imagine that I wasn't looking or smelling all that great, heh.
That evening and the following morning I spent a good amount of time just walking around the city. Wellington is a beautiful city set on the coast. It is also incredibly windy. Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings movies, has residence here. In addition, a theater called The Embassy in Wellington was where the movies first premiered (just around the corner from the hostel). Here are some of the pictures that I took while wandering the town. The first few are of the Beehive, which is the Parliament building. As you can see, it has some unusual architecture.
Here are a few more views of Wellington as well as of the ocean.
I went to an indoor rock climbing gym the second day to do some climbing, which was a lot of fun. On my way back to the hostel, I stopped by a really nice (and free) museum called the Te Papa museum (see below). It was certainly a nice museum, but I'm sorry to admit that I spent only about 10 minutes there since I get bored pretty easily in museums. I basically just relaxed and did some computer stuff the rest of the evening.
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