feed a cold, starve a fever?

Or is it vice versa? I'm going with the second since I feel even crappier after I ate breakfast. Yup, I have a cold. A nasty one. I'm blaming the plane ride. It sucks to because I really want to explore Wellington since I'm only here for last night and today but I have no energy. The whole town is booked because of this huge rugby tournament. That means I'm taking the ferry across to Picton tomorrow morning, which is fine. I think I'm going to go to Marlborough Sounds and crash there for a few days, I figure a quiet, becautiful place can only help. Also, the Wellington YHA (where I'm staying) is right across the street for a (HUGE) supermarket, so I went and stocked up on meds/fruit/etc.

It's weird, I'm only used to backpacking in Central America, where things are never easy- throat losenges you say? nope. A nice neat little prepared fruit bowl in the refridgerated section of the grocery store? surely not. Razor blade replacements for the exact razor I have? You've got. It almost makes me nervous, like why is it so easy to do things here??

I'm in an internet cafe just a few blocks from the hostel. The Wellington City YHA has won best hostel in Oceania- and it's not hard to see why. It's very clean, very well run, and Huge. I'm still getting used to this hostel the size of college dorms thing. I'm used to my little, 30 bed places. I think YHA Welly has several hundred. I'm on the fourth floor, in a 6 bed all girls shared room. This morning, just like in Auckland, everyone who was there last night checked out. One woman there was on business (and staying in the dorms? she needs to get a raise...) but she is Maori, the native people of New Zealand, and so we had a long talk about this big holiday tomorrow, Waitangi Day, that celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document, on that date in 1840, except apparently the British man who was translating for the Maori lied about what was in the treaty, and they basically forfeited all rights to their land, etc. It was myself, the Maori woman, a British woman and French woman. It was a good ending to a long day.

Yesterday I took the train from Auckland to Wellington, 12 hours. It was a beautiful ride, and as always when traveling, I met some fun people to hang out with on the train. In the back rows of the back car there was myself, a german girl next to me, and a Kiwi, an Aussie, and a Chinese girl. Also, two boys but they slept most of the time so I didn't find out much about them. There's another train that crosses the north part of the South Island East to West (and vice versa) that I want to take, it's supposed to be really beautiful. The Southern Hemisphere Alps is what they like to call them.

Well that ought to do for now, if the internet at the hostel goes back up today I'll try and post some pictures. Again I have some great pictures to share but I forgot to bring my USB cord to the cafe with me so another time.