Our next stopover was just that, essentially just a stop to break up the journey between Abel Tasman and Franz Josef, so after taking a few walks, as well as seeing more seals on the rocks, we drove into Westport, just for an evening. We, and a few others, took up the offer of a brewery tour around the corner from our hostel, where they brew local ale! It was a great opportunity to finally get to know the people on our new bus, and of course it ended with a class...

Very early in the morning (seems to be a theme of this trip...) we left our hostel in Wellington to catch a taxi to the ferry terminal. A slightly bumpy start to the day, as we nearly went to the wrong ferry terminal! Somehow and who-knows-why, but there are 2 terminals in the capital city, and we’d managed to book our taxi to the wrong one. Luckily, our driver had shown us the right one on the way into Wellington, so we managed to scream our ride to a halt as ...

With limbs still sore from the previous day’s hike, we headed off at the slightly more friendly time of half 8 to our next stop, the capital city of Wellington. Making many stops along the way, we finally arrived there in the late afternoon. Our first night we decided to head to the main area of Cuba Street, for the weekend food markets, which didn’t disappoint! After gazing and browsing the options of food and enjoying the live music, I opted for a Malaysian...

I was unsure about taking part in the Tongariro Alpine Crossing walk, as it was a 19.6km hike and was going to potentially be quite cold along the way, (hence the ‘alpine’), but I eventually signed up along with most of the people on our bus, and shuffled my way to the 6am take off, back along the windy cliff roads! After having a shoe check (to check that we had the right grip on our shoes) and renting some gloves (alpine!!) we headed off in the shuttle bus ...

After leaving the lodge and heading towards Blue Duck Station, we made a quick stop in Taupō, where David went and sky dived out of a plane! I, instead, took a walk by Lake Taupō and walked around the lovely little town, until it was time to go and pick up a shell shocked David and head towards our next stop. When we finally arrived at Blue Duck, after some very windy roads on the edge of the cliff (also remember we were in the random bus with no seat belts!), ...