We got up around 6am and headed off towards the Tongariro National Park. We firstly pulled up at the end of the crossing but we were convinced not to start walking by the couple we were with. We headed round to the start I was determined to go up it, we stared walking and it took us about an hour to reach the base of the volcano, we had walked about half way up when the couple started going on about "approaching weather fronts blah blah blah" and crap like "you'll die if you go up there". Annoying they managed to convince Brid no to go up so I went on my own, 20mins up 20mins down, no dying, snow hole digging or rescue helicopters involved. The volcano was used as mount doom in lord of the rings so we nicked some stones to keep.

Had some lunch at the bottom and decided to head on down the road a bit to a town I cant remember, went into the pub for one or two, half way through number 2 the fire alarm went off and the whole building was evacuated. Made some food and found some where to sleep for the night.

Got up next morning in the hunt for some internet, for a 1st world country New Zealand has some crappy internet cafes. We then headed off for the Tui Brewery, we started off with the tour, and then moved on to the booze for 12.50NZD you got 3 pints and your free glass which was pretty good value seeing as boozing is quite expensive here. We should have come for the tour on a Friday as there are 10 beautiful girls that work there on a Friday.

We continued south into Wellington were we planned to spend a couple of days doing nothing. It has some pretty confusing one way streets so it took us a while to get where we wanted to go. It was quite late so we just had a small wander around the city centre.

There seems to be allot to do in Wellington that's free so we decided to do some of those. Firstly we drove up to mount Victoria to get a good view of the city. Next we tried to find the weta cave, who were the company who did all the special affects for lord of the rings; we must have taken the scenic route by mistake as it took us ages to get there. Once we finally did it was allot smaller than I thought it would be, there was a short video to watch as well. Next we headed off to the Te Papu Museum which turned out to be really good, there were heaps of stuff to play with which kept me and brid entertained for a while. There was also a whole section dedicated to Scotland which was interesting.

We'd been really lazy lately so we headed off to the local swimming pool to put in some laps. Booked our ferry across to the south island for the next day and did nothing else really.