North island
Wellington (Lower Hutt), NZ
It’s Sunday, which I should know because we’ve asked ourselves a handful of times today. The days all feel the same - no Monday morning cobwebs, Tuesday or Wednesday mid-week flurry, no Thursday last push, Friday slide or weekend to-dos. Not that every day is the same, but no day of the week has a feeling attached to it.
On the car ride from Urenui to Wellington today I developed a body ache - throat, hips, calves, back, shoulders. With a belly full of curry, my plan is to sleep it off by morning.
We’re booked at a Top 10 Holiday resort in (a suburb of) Wellington. We have a family cabin with bunkbeds and a kitchenette and share the campground-like bathroom facilities. It’s the first we’ve booked accommodations with shared facilities, but turns out I like it. The women’s bathroom is clean and nice and they play ‘80s music 24/7.
In the shared kitchen, the boys and I baked peanut butter snickerdoodle cookies. We had enough ingredients on hand to make it work and we used a piece of tin foil I found to bake them on. One dad was cooking taco meat on the stove for his 3 school-age boys and a thirtysomething Scandinavian woman shared our industrial sized oven to bake her shepherd’s pie. “I hope your cookies don’t taste like cheese!” she said! “I kind of hope they do!” I said in return. Brief, positive exchanges with others is exciting.
It’s hard to find things not to like about New Zealand. It’s relaxed, lush with a variety of ecosystems, they value their natural resources, the native Maori culture is alive and revered (or so it seems), the roads are well-kept, the water is fresh and drinkable. It’s an island vibe plus incredible infrastructure. Keeping within our $100 USD/day on food and $100 USD/day on accommodation has been challenging here, but not impossible. It’s the home of Flight of the Conchords and my dear former coworker Fay. And we haven’t even gotten to south island yet.
