The ferry journey from the South was calm, with scenery comparable to Milford Sound. Unfortunately, a new island does not equal new organisational skills, and useless as ever, all we had to entertain ourselves with for the four hour journey was food (wraps) and the Bible (NZ Lonely Planet). When we were done with this, we slept.

Continuing our disorganised trend, we rang Brian and Lavinia who we met in Moeraki, when we were ten minutes from their house! They kindly took us in. Luckily we'd had the foresight to get a couple of bottles of wine to say thanks (5 mins from their house!). We brought bad luck with us in the form of a power cut, and having been shown to our guestroom, complete with electric blankets and hot water bottles, munched on crackers, cheese, olives and the most fantastic homemade tomato chutney in the dark!

Lavinia impresively finished cooking on the gas hob, in the dark, and served a feast of Terahki, a very tasty white fish, and homemade baby meringues for pudding. Their eldest son, Dwayne, popped in just in time for pudding, and was less than fazed that there were two random girls staying at his parents' house. Brian and Lavinia themselves have done a lot of travelling, and had loads of great stories, and knowing themselves what it is like being on the road happily take in strays. For which we were very grateful!

I do have to mention their wine cellar, on opening the door I let out an audible WOW, Dad, you would have been impressed. I guess when you build a house you can build it to your personal liking, the cellar wine was certainly to our liking!

The next day we head off as proper tourists on the train into Wellington, leaving Johnny at Paraparaumu Station (we struggled with the town names in the South, how we will cope up here with the strong Maori influence, I've no idea). Comedy Festival is in town, so we head straight to the Crunchie Ticket booth, to get 2 for 1 tickets, and a free crunchie! We settle on The Comediettes, a NZ female trio, then head for lunch.

Lunch is a story in itself. Check out the photos. Copious amounts of mussles and Belgian beer. We didn't actually count the mussels, but we had 1/2 litre of Hoegaarden each. Once we were well and truly beaten, they kindly doggy bagged the leftovers, which only 5m up the road we binned, unable to stomach any more of the crazy giant mussels. They were green lipped mussels, and we were feeling pretty green ourselves by that point.

We decided that a walk was in order, and took the cablecar to the top of Mt Victoria and opted to walk back down. A pleasant walk wish pushed our muscles slightly south, a bonus.

Next we decided to head for some culture, NZ national museum, Te Papa. For those interested, I will share a little of what we learnt:

Firstly, NZ is situated on 2 ever shifting plates, which we have to thank for the fabulous mountains and lakes. Not so good though, are the 15,000 earthquakes a year, and active volcanoes, although even these have their tourist benefits, and have created hot pools, and given NZ two totally Art Deco towns, Napier and Hastings - both destroyed in the 1930s by a massive earthquake.

From land to animal facts - and the largest bird in the world, now extinct. The Moa. Ridiculously huge, a bit like an emu but over 6ft tall and eggs the equivalent to 60 hens eggs in size! It's only predator, the giant eagle, also extinct, had a skull 6 times the size of it's living descendants. They were pretty scary too. The two supersized animals didn't like each other much and frequently battled. There are skeletons of the pair merged together in death. The one we saw, the eagles claw had punctured the Moa's pelvic bone. Don't want to know what they could have done to me!

The Maori floor was actually a little disappointing. We didn't really learn much so made it a task for ourselves to learn more during our time in the North Island. The simulator ride made me feel more sick than jumping out of a plane, and wasn't enjoyable. Thankfully our slot wasn't until 4.45pm, otherwise I think the mussels may have made a reappearance.

The Comedy act followed, and was quite comical! Although, me and Todders agreed that an evening with us could be comparable. On that note, we headed to the pub, played some pool, missed the last train, and relied on the friendly nature of the New Zealanders for a spare room to stay in.

The next morning, we sheepishly headed back to Brian and Lavinia's, annoyed with ourselves and giving ourselves a stern talking to on the train ride home. Luckily, with four grown children themselves, they didn't seem fazed, and took us back in, all being forgiven. Before starting our journey Northwards, we met another of their sons, Todd, at his restaurant by the beach. We had a quick coffee, a stroll down to the beach, thanked Lavinia, showed her our Camper, and off we went. We'd like to take this opportunity to again thank both Brian and Lavinia for putting up with our randomness. You have a lovely family, gorgeous home and made us feel really welcome. Sorry Brian, we didn't get to say goodbye, and Lavinia, we will try to be more organised in future and stay out of the pubs!!! You will always have a place to stay in Bournemouth! Failing that I will come and terrorise you again in NZ at some point in the future!