Last of the North Island.

We left Waitomo and headed for Lake Taupo a little further south. Lake Taupo was formed in the crater created by a giant explosion thousands of years ago. It's a huge lake and the town built around it is a popular holiday destination and a haven for trout fishermen in particular. Taupo was a bit like Rotorua for us though as there wasn't a lot there that we were interested in. It probably didn't help that we had some awful weather while we were there so you could barely see the giant lake, let alone do anything on it. As a result, we only passed through the area but one sight we did go to see is the Huka Falls. Even in a country with loads of waterfalls, this is a pretty impressive one. The falls are created as the Waikato river flows into a narrow channel generating a huge amount of force and energy. Even though the actual drop from the falls is only 10 metres, it churns out a huge amount of water the equivalent of an Olympic swimming pool every 2 seconds. As a result, its one of the most effective hydro-electric generating systems in the country, supplying energy for Taupo and the surrounding region.

Just down the road from the Huka Falls, is one of the weirdest tourist spots that we had been to on our travels; the Huka Prawn Farm.This is the worlds only geothermally heated prawn farm and uses the natural volcanic water to heat the prawn beds. You are able to do a short tour of the facility and see how they breed the prawns, including the face of the prawn farm - "Shawn the Prawn"; although the main attraction for most people is the prawn fishing that you do afterwards. Emma was unconvinced by this, however I wanted to do it as they let you keep what you catch and I didnt think it would be that difficult to get a decent dinner out of it. You are simply given a bamboo rod with a hook that you bait with some meat, dangle in the water and wait for a bite. And you generally wait for quite a while, they are tricky little things to catch and after about1 and a half hours I had only managed to haul in 3 of the little blighters. I was tempted to keep trying and not go hungry tonight but we had a long drive ahead of us and had to leave.

The drive from Taupo heading south passes through Mt Tongariro national park via a road known as the Desert Road. The desert road is bizarre as that's exactly what it looks like around you as you are driving through it. Despite the fact that as you head into it, you are in quite green country, it rapidly becomes barren and sandy as a result of a weird weather pattern in the area. Its currently used by the army as a testing ground and there is a large barracks here. It's a horribly exposed place and you would hate to be on army training around here, as its so exposed its often closed in bad weather. Mt Tongariro is now more well known as Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately the bad weather that had hovered over us at Lake Taupo continued with us on our journey so for most of our journey along the desert road we couldn't actually see it - despite it being one of the largest mountains in NZ. Thankfully the weather picked up a little and we caught a glimpse or 2 of it through the clouds. It doesn't look as impressive without a big eye hanging over the top of it though.

As part of the drive, we decided to go off the main highway for a little as the lonely planet said that there was a great drive along the Whanganui river. What it failed to mention is that most of it is an unsealed road and in the weather we had it was little more than a mud track! Despite the poor condition of the road, the route itself is spectacular, you drive along the river as it descends into the valley. The majority of the route is in the mountains and you drive through lush forest of ferns and local trees with stunning scenery all around. The areas along the river were originally a large trade route for forested timber passing down the river, however these days it is pretty much abandoned there isn't a lot of life along the road. There are still some small towns along the route, one of which is called Jerusalem and is the site of St Joseph's church, founded by a French catholic mission at the turn of the century. This is a gorgeous little church and has a stunning location looking out over the river valley. (Impressive even on a rainy day like ours.After a few hours on the back road along the river, we rejoined the main highway outsise of Whanganui and pulled up there for the night.

The next day we continued our push towards Wellington and got there in the early afternoon after stopping for a while in the University town of Palmerston North. Wellington is quite a small city, even by New Zealand standards as both Auckland and Christchurch are larger. However I really liked Wellington, it has a small town feel with all the advantages of a city. (It reminds me a lot of Galway a few years ago, before they became obsessesd with housing schemes, roundabouts and orbital roads). As we were in the city, we stayed at a hostel called Rowena's which allows you to park your campervan and sleep in it, but still use their facilities. It turnedout to be a good deal as there bedrooms weren't up to much and it had some odd people staying there.On the positive, the bad weather that had hung around had lifted once we got here so we had some good weather to sightsee in.As the capital city, Wellington is the home of New Zealand's parliament so that wasdefinitely on my hitlist. Sometimes I feel sorry for Emma as I drag her round something geeky like this, but then I am reminded of shoe shopping with her and feel like it's a fair trade :-)

The parliament tour was actually very good, you get to go behind the scenes quite a bit and unlike other parliament tours, you go into the main debating chamber, rather than just sitting in the visitor gallery. The parliament building itself is a bit random, as there are 3 distinct parts to it, the ParliamentaryLibrary which was part of the original building built in 1899; the main Parliament Building which was built in 1922 after a fire destroyed most of the original building, and the Beehive, a concrete oddity that was built during the 1970's. Its like a visual architectural timeline. Just down the road from the Parliament Builidng is Old St Pauls. Built in 1866, it's an Anglican church that looks fairly plain from the outside. As you approach it, it looks like a lot of the churches we have seen on our travels across NZ, with white weatherboard panels on the plain exterior. However, once you go inside it's a fantastic looking building. The entire church interior has been made of wood, however it is in the classic gothic style more commonly found in catholic cathedrals of the time.The ornateness, scale and quality of the work make it stand out, particularly in such an uninspiring exterior.

To get the best views of wellington, you need to get up high and the best vantage point in the city is at the botanic gardens. Situated at the top of Mt Hutt ??? the botanic gardens offer a panoramic view over Wellington in acres of parkland. To get to the gardens, you need to ride on a cable car which glides up the hill all day long. Based on an Austrian system, the cable car has been running in one form or another since 1902. It's a great little excursion, and isn't just a tourist trap as the locals use it to get up to the university which is situated halfway up.Wellington is also home to Te Papa - the national museum of New Zealand.This giant museum was opened in 1998 and is the best of what modern museums have to offer. We spent most of a day there and there was still loads of stuff we didn't see. There are large Maori exhibits as you would imagine however unlike the museum in Auckland there is a large emphasis on modern Maori's. Particularly with reference to claims under the Waitangi treaty which is currently big news in NZ and slightly out there topics such as maori intellectual property over traditional carvings and designs.As well as this, there is exhibits on the natural history of NZ, both its animals and plants as well as the geology involved in a country that is basically a giant volcanic ridge. My favourite part was a large exhbit aboutimmigration into new zeland and in particular the Scottish influence in the country.I had a very bizarre chat to a Japanese tourist when I tried to explain the concept of using turf as fuel, as the display wasn't very clear about what it was used for.

We had a great time in Wellington, as well as all the tourist attractions, it has a huge range of bars and we were kept quite happy visiting a few of them. My favourite being Mac's Brewery bar on the quay, shortly followed by JJ Murphy's in town which was a great place to watch the rugby.I also got to meet one of my old workmates, Rachel who lives over here now and have a few beers with her which was nice. During this part of our trip, we had begun to notice that the weather was generally getting colder as we had headed south. As a result I had started to wear my blue Narcosis jumper,This jumper started to become my best friend over the next few weeks and you will soon see that it is in just about every photo from now on. After 4 days in town, it was time to leave the north island behind and with a ridiculously early start, we caught the 8am ferry across the Cook Strait onto the South Island, and a whole other set of experiences on our travels.