Babbling Brooke’s Travel Blog

December 26, our 15th day in NZ, we packed up, left our Airbnb (a bit reluctantly because this place was truly that special)…and headed out for Wellington! 

Our original itinerary had us going to hike Tongoriro (aka Mount Doom for LOTR fans), but unfortunately wildfires were still an issue AND a big weather system was blowing through so we adjusted our plans to spend an extra night in Wellington. This meant we had a big drive to get through! 

To break it up a little bit, we stopped at the well known Huka falls. It was BUSY but worth it and we lucked out on parking, to top it off. The water was insanely blue as 200000L p/m flowing out of Lake Taupo was forced into a small slot canyon- creating a raging river before spilling out over a ledge into the water below.

Jet boats zoomed up to the waterfall from downstream and did donuts with their riders all bundled in orange life jackets and holding insta360s high above their heads. 

After Huka Falls, we drove through Taupo and I’m so glad we did! It was an awesome town that felt similar to Bend, OR in that it had outdoorsy vibes with lots of breweries and to top it off, Taupo is set on the edge of a beautiful blue lake (Lake Taupo). I would love to come back here and spend more time because I know there’s more to see! 

After some lunch it was time to keep going onward…and into a sandstorm?! That was not on my bingo card for the day but man was it a mix of cool and freaky! Shoutout to the nz first responders for keeping everyone safe on the road! 

We made it into Wellington and checked into our hotel, (after not being able to find the entrance for a while?) dropped our stuff, and went out to find food. I had read that Wellington was a foodie town and I was excited to dive in! To our dismay, the city was dead as could be. It seemed like absolutely nothing was open and we saw our first bunch of unhoused folks since we had left Seattle. The vibes were off all around and after leaving our favorite Airbnb of the trip, the comedown was real and we were feeeeeeling it, especially after driving ALL day and being underwhelmed by our hotel. Also shoutout to Matt for being the MVP that day 💓🫶. He drove the entire thing! 🥹 

After walking around for what felt like over an hour- we finally found an open restaurant! Praise be. We had to wait a little but it was worth it. The Old Quarter is a Vietnamese restaurant and holy crap everything we ordered there, including my gin cocktail, was amazing! Maybe we had been hungry cause not everything seemed quite so rough! 

Walking back to the hotel, we stopped at Timezone to play some games which was reminiscent of all the games we played in Japan! Matt and I raced (video-game) cars, competed shooting hoops, and tried to win the claw games (unsuccessfully). We left laughing and feeling even better than earlier. 

It was time for bed (and a couple episodes of Stranger Things that had just dropped) after such a long day and we had one FULL DAY in Wellington ahead of us. I was excited for a chance to change our underwhelming first impression of this windy city (spoiler alert, it gets much better).