The long drive to Wellington
Thursday 2004-03-25
This is the day that I finally leave Auckland and head for Wellington. It's a long drive - somewhere between 8 and 10 hours. I was hoping to leave at about 8 am, but after the late night last night it was difficult getting started. I finally pulled out at about 10 am, after giving everyone a hug. A homestay / B&B really is different than just staying in a motel. You really do get to know and become attached to the people you meet at a homestay. Karen also left this morning - on a bus bound for New Plymouth. As soon as I got on the road headed south I started running into road work. The roads in NZ are very well maintained. The roadwork that I was hitting was mostly resurfacing or adding a 'new seal' as the signs said. The new seal involves dumping lots of loose gravel on fresh tar or asphalt. The speed limit drops from the normal of 100 km/hr to either 30 or 70 km/hr. The problem is that during my trip to Wellington I must have run into at least 40 or 50 road resurfacing operations. I'm not kidding! At one point I was convinced that half the population of NZ was employed as road maintanance workers! Needless to say this really slowed me down. It ended up taking me about 9 1/2 hours to get to Wellington. Along the way I drove through a number of interesting looking towns (mostly small towns) and saw all kinds of scenery. The scenery varied from grassy plains to wooded forests to almost desert. I was very surprised at how dry the desert-like area was. After many, many delays due to road repair I finally got into Wellington about 8 pm. I had reserved a B&B just off the hightway and I checked into it. Then Carol and I went out for dinner and a bit of sightseeing. We discussed our weekend plans over dinner. After dinner she took me up the hill for a panaroma view of the city of Wellington and the harbor. Our plan for tomorrow was to meet about 12:30 pm and start heading out of town.