Pinnáculos de Putangirua y Cabo Palliser

Domingo, 13.10.2019

Last week, unfortunately, I had little success job hunting in Wellington. Therefore, it was nice to get out of the city on Sunday. I went with Dan, whom I met at the hostel and who luckily has a car, and 7 other people (met through Facebook) to the Pinnáculos de Putangirua y Cabo Palliser. Dan picked me up nicely at 8 in the morning at the hostel, which is way too early for me, but since it's a 1.5-hour drive from Wellington, it was unfortunately necessary. We also passed through Martinborough, where I did woofing. There we treated ourselves to good coffee and scones. In Putangirua, we had to wait a bit for the others, and then we all went hiking. Actually, we wanted to take the large round of about 3 or 4 hours and stop at a lookout along the way. But somehow we totally missed the turn and ended up at a pretty steep rock wall, which we thought had the lookout at the top. So, we all crawled up on all fours, only to realize that you actually can't go all the way up. And it wasn't so easy to climb up there since it was almost all rubble, but the view from further up was amazing. We felt a bit like those people who fall off cliffs for a selfie, but we all made it back down safely and then found the actual lookout (you just had to walk up normal steps). Anyway, that was quite an adventure.

Later, we drove further to Cabo Palliser, which is the southernmost tip of the North Island, and there were so many seals on the rocks. You could get quite close; they were all just chilling in the sun. Really cute! It was worth it just for that!

On the way back to Wellington, we all went out for pizza. It was the first time I truly ate out, and I see why, because a regular pizza costs more than 20 dollars! But it was really delicious!

In any case, it was a really nice day.

This week I'm still in Wellington, but Dan and I are considering going to Mt. Taranaki over the weekend. It’s a 5-hour drive, but if the weather is good, we will definitely do it!