We just spent a great couple of days in Wellington visiting our friends Taisuke and Brenda. They are really into raw and living foods and Brenda has even started here own line of raw snack foods, Vida Foods. We got to try all the goods and they were amazing! We also had a couple of excellent dinners of raw foods with them. Some of the highlights were thick fruit smoothies served in a bowl with sprouted buckwheat granola sprinkled on top, homemade guacamole with sun-dried tomato & walnut raw crackers, huge salads with delicious herbs & spices we’ve never tried before, and chewy cashew coconut truffles. Sarah is now addicted to these. Here we are right before chowing down.

Taisuke and Brenda live in a beautiful old shoe factory that has been converted to lofts right in the middle of Wellington. We had our own room and bathroom and slept on our first real bed in two months. Oh the luxury! Their apartment is right off one of the pedestrian-only streets, Cuba Street. Cuba Street has the highest density of cafes in the Southern Hemisphere. Here we are enjoying the afternoon and the lack of cars.

Taisuke and Brenda are also very accomplished at Bikram Yoga and we went to a session with them. Bikram standards instruct that the yoga studio be kept at 106 degrees Fahrenheit. The night we went to class there was something wrong with the thermostat so our room was only 100. Wow! We have never sweated so much in our lives. It really felt great though and we realized how tight some of our muscles are from cycling so much.

We also realized how beautiful Wellington is while we were there. We passed through it on our way down South, but having Taisuke and Brenda to show us around really made us appreciate the city more. It reminds us a lot of Seattle and San Francisco back home with its mountains and surrounding water. It is also extremely hilly! Here is Sarah making her way up one of the many neighborhood switchbacks.

There is a giant green area right in the city called Mount Victoria where we walked their foster dog, Gus. Here we are walking through one of the filming locations of Lord of the Rings inside the park.

Sarah and I were also able to get our Thai visas while in Wellington. Here Sarah is with her hard-earned Visa.

After getting our visas, we decided to go on a celebratory bike ride around the coastline surrounding the city. It was a beautiful ride and we were impressed with all the untouched beaches right outside the city.

One of the many beautiful bays:

A fun road to cycle – very curvy, but not hilly!

Watch out for airplanes and flying bicycles!

Thank you so much Taisuke and Brenda and thanks for keepin’ it raw!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 4:13 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.