Okay so it was a bit of a trek to get here; we left Taupo early and headed along the desert road - there was lots of windy roads. We did get to stop to take a picture of Mount Doom out of the Lord of the Rings, that looked properly good just like out of the film. We ten got to Wellington about 4 o'clock and the bus driver drove us up to Mt Vitoria so we could look down on the whole city. Wellington is famous for it's architecture and it is actually pretty impressive. We saw quite a bit of this on the bus through town - it seemed to take ages to drop everyone off but eventually at 5.15pm we managed to jump off and leg it to the Te Papa Museum (it's the national museum) before it closed at 6.30pm. It was a great museum and luckily I can head back there on my way up.

The youth hostel was absolutely massive and fully booked (YHA) so you had to fight for kitchen space; at this point we decided that it would probably be best to go with the fish and chip option!! To be honest I was not impressed, in theory they should be better at this then us but in practice they haven't quite mastered it!

It was a very early start the next morning as we had to catch the ferry from Wellington down to the South Island. Due to the terrible weather they warned us it wouldn't be a smooth crossing so I was prepared with the old travel sickness tablets that did there job! We got picked up the other side in Picton by the magic bus which took us on to Nelson - where it was actually sunny! For my return to the North Island I think I might skip all the hassle and take a scenic flight instead of the ferry.