Day 123 - A Long-Term and a Short-Term Reunion

This morning we were picked up quite early at our motel, and finally met our former neighbors at a Russian style café in the city. I cannot tell you how excited I was! To finally hear her voice, to experience how she is, what she talks about, how she laughs... And she did not disappoint me. It was just amazing with her and her parents. Unfortunately her sister couldn’t join us. I haven’t seen her since 2002, because she was sick when we visited them in 2007... We also took some pictures together, and shot a video clip for the missing sister (I said something) and one for my mum and sister back home (they said something). Wow, it was so great.

 

After one hour (that passed so fast!) of talking and eating, we walked back to our motel through the city, checked out, put the luggage into the rental car, and went to the cable car station. Unfortunately a cruise ship had just arrived and there was a queue that costed us 30 minutes. But again, we met nice people and had interesting conversations.

 

At the top point we took the famous cable-car-in-front-of-Wellington picture, and had a walk back to town through the botanic garden where we could admire once again beautiful fern trees. After a big rose garden we came across a very old cemetery of many people who died young, but which was overbuilt by a freeway. Not only the freeway, but also office buildings were built on or near the old cemetery. The people working in the office have to watch the graves day in day out... We walked back to our car with some lunch picked up in the supermarket, and drove to Mount Victoria, where we had a stunning view of Wellington. And it was not even windy – how lucky we were weather-wise.

 

 



This is Wellington: a complete mix
of the most different building styles

 

 

Happy driving towards Taupo! We had such a good weather that we could even take pictures of the two visible snow-hatted volcanos (Mt Tongariru and Mt Ruhapehu) cloudless. On our way to Wellington a few days earlier, we didn’t see anything because of the rainclouds and fog. In Taupo we watched the sun going down and brave people skydiving in the freaking cold, so that we invented a warm-up dance. What others would have thought... In the B&B we had the second reunion of today, because my dad has been here exactly eleven months ago.

Lake Taupo