After Tongariro, we had enough of the rain. It had been raining for four days straight, and camping is just no fun in that kind of weather. We drove 4 hours from Tongariro National Park towards Napier: an unnecessarily long distance because we had to go all the way back to Taupo to get away from Tongariro. On the way, we made several stops. Once because it was raining so heavily that we couldn't see anything, and then to see waterfalls, which I still think are the coolest of all.Waipunga Falls
We arrived in sunny Napier around 5:00 PM, a really beautiful vacation spot. We headed to a free campsite, but unfortunately, it was already full. However, we were surprised to see a lot of dolphins jumping through the bay and attracting observers on land. We spent two nights at a large, free campsite by the sea and explored Napier. Two days before Christmas, we set off for Wellington. A 5-hour journey that we planned to split into two days. We stayed at an affordable campsite in a small town called Eketahuna, where I accidentally gave the owner the money instead of my hand when he came around to collect it. The next morning, he waved goodbye to Celina three times before we finally had everything together and actually left. On the halfway of the journey, we had to pass through a forest park, and the narrow road over the mountain was the worst we had encountered so far.
All cities in New Zealand are basically built the same way. The city center usually consists of one street with all the buildings being low-rise and the same shops as everywhere else. In the three months since we left Auckland, we had gotten used to such cities. So we were even more excited when we arrived in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, on the 23rd. The main street by the harbor was almost entirely made up of skyscrapers, and even though this was the only place with high-rises in Wellington, it felt like we had arrived in a giant metropolis. First, we parked at a paid parking lot by the harbor, where Celina stayed while I picked up the Christmas packages from the huge post office. We navigated through Wellington's city center and held our breath as we entered the parking garage with a height limit of 1.90m (we only had 4 centimeters to spare). Then something happened for the first time: after nearly three months, we left our car for the first time. We packed one of our backpacking backpacks and each took a carry-on suitcase (for three nights!). We carefully locked our Toyota Estima, even the trunk (which we normally don't do because we always think the key will break). Then we made our way through Wellington's city center towards Cuba Street.
