I spent a day hanging out in Wellington to recover a bit from all the non-stop travelling. The weather in Wellington has been pretty amazing every day I've been there, and it was a nice warm sunny day. I didn't have any real plans or objectives, and was happy to just explore around downtown and along the harbor. The only really notable encounter of the day was with a tiny baby penguin that seemed to be wandering alone in the rocks down along the water, but it was unfortunately one of the times I didn't have my camera with me.
The next morning I took the morning bus from Wellington up to Taupo, where I was going to be meeting some locals to visit Tongariro National Park. Taupo is another fairly small town (similar to Owen Sound in population), sitting on the picturesque Lake Taupo. Our accomodations and transportation for the hike at Tongariro was entirely set up by Claire, who I think is the only person I've met in 4 different countries now - China, Hong Kong, Nepal and New Zealand (I can only think of 4 people, 3 of whom are family, that I've even met in 3 countries). She lives fairly close to Taupo and had been wanting to do the hike, so when I got to New Zealand we picked a suitable date and she did all the hard work, which was especially notable because the weekend we picked happened to also be the weekend of the Taupo Iron Man competition, and almost everything in town was booked solid. In the end our group was 5 people (including 3 of her friends from nearby Hamilton), and we met up in the evening at our lodging for the night before going out to pick up some groceries for the hike.
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