New Zealand - River Valley & Wellington

Day 22 - Monday, February 13

We were only in River Valley for the one night. It's a stop that's pretty much only on the route because it's considered the best white-water rafting in NZ. But it was only a couple of hours of rafting, the water level was low, and it was quite expensive. Having done a good bit of rafting in the States, including an awesome 2-day trip on the Kern River not long ago, I decided to pass on the rafting, and take the opportunity to sleep in for the first morning in a while.

Another day, another hike. I decided since I wasn't going rafting, I'd do a couple of the short hikes around the lodge, while we waited on the rafters. Here's a couple of photos that I took while hiking around. In the first you can see the lodge where we stayed.

From New Zealand - River Valley & Kaiteriteri

From New Zealand - River Valley & Kaiteriteri

We didn't leave River Valley until about 2pm, at which point we headed to Wellington, the capital of NZ, which other than being a city, isn't know to be much of a popular destination. More than anything else, it's probably known for it's bad weather - very windy and rainy, cloudy and cold. Our bus driver touted wellington as a great party town, noting that it had more bars and clubs per capita than NYC. So we ventured out of the hostel bar and down the street at like 11 only to find the town completely dead. When we asked a couple of people on the street where a good place was to go, they said that it was monday night and so the only place that wouldn't be completely dead was the hostel bar. Oh well, we tried. I think the highlight of my 12 hours in Wellington was seeing this video playing in the bar, featuring the always awesome Betty White.