Again, due to essential time wasting, I had to spend one whole week in Wellington. Fortunately, the Mercure rooms were on special and even though I had to endure a week of pot noodle dinners (I was a kettle meal virgin) it was worth the slight extra cost for the television alone.

Like much of New Zealand, Wellington didn't have too much on offer. I was tempted by a day trip to Eastbourne but I knew that for $15 it would have been a disappointment, so I opted out of that one. Instead, each day, I forced myself out of the hotel room for an average of 3-4 hours. This was mainly so that Housekeeping could gain access and make the bed and top-up the hot chocolate sachets, but also to prevent my anger from getting out of control as a result of the excessive amount of adverts shown on NZTV. However, when I did go out, it took approximately twenty minutes to walk in and out of the CBD, a futher ten minutes to get to the supermarket where, on most days, I'd spend an hour walking around at snail pace studying every item intently and dreaming about what I couldn't have/afford. I have no idea where the other two hours and ten minutes went but I was always back by 5pm for 'Neighbours', followed by 'The Simpsons', then the news (which, by the way, is minimal and was the same everyday for a week because nothing happens here), then 'Just Shoot Me' (it's a programme, although at times in NZ, literally) and then 'Shortland Street', 'Gordon Ramsey - Hell's Kitchen', a film on Sky Movies and finally, 'Drawn Together', by now it was 11pm so I called it a day and slept for 10 hours.

From Wellington it's only three more trips on the Magic Bus before returning to Auckland when it will be over for good! The first of these trips took me to the Art Deco town of Napier for two nights. As predicted, not a lot to do here but driving past Eastbourne Road in Hastings was a bit of a novelty. Once in Napier, some of the buildings I saw were interesting with their Art Deco designs - nothing particularly worthy of a Kodak moment though. Again, the supermarket was the main attraction here, my highlight being the purchase of a new toothbrush - a manual Colgate 360 with inbuilt tongue and cheek cleaner; she runs like a dream...

The next stop is Mount Maunganui (Mau-ga-new-e) before Auckland for a record eight nights - Qantas won't let me leave any earlier, despite my begging and pleading!