Welcome to Welly!

We decided last minute to change our ferry crossing from late Friday night to first thing Friday morning so we could have an extra day on the North Island. This turned out to be one of our better decisions, as the weather in Picton when we left at 7am was British style miserable! However, we arrived in Welly and the sun was shining!

What a lovely day in Wellington, it's hard to believe that it's NZ's capital city as there is very small business district, and the whole place it is surrounded by water, gardens and mountains…not like many cities we know!

We had a look around Te Papa museum, which looked great for kids, we were wishing we had our nieces and nephews with us to make it more fun! We gave this up as a bad job after spending quite a while watching a film on the recovery of a giant squid…really it was enormous and had the biggest eyes ever recorded on a living thing…they were revolting! From here we caught the Wellington Cable Car, which heads up a hill to the Wellington Gardens.

It was definitely living up to the name of 'Windy Welly' at the top of the hill and so we walked down through the gardens and stopped off at the teashop, which is set in a beautiful rose garden. Nana you would have loved it here…I took lots of photos for you! We sat in the sun and enjoyed a cuppa while being harassed by some fat sparrows, which nearly took off with my blueberry muffin…I caught them in the act though!

We had decide that we would save ourselves some time and try and get the drive to Taupo over and done with…5 ½ hours! The journey started slow as we got stuck in traffic…unbelievable nearly 2 weeks without seeing another car and now traffic!!!

After a quick tea stop at Otaki beach, we eventually arrived at the campsite (farmers field/gravel pit) at 10:45pm! Little did we know but we were camping right across the road from Mt Doom…(Lord of the Rings mountain) :)

This was the worst night's sleep ever as we were freezing cold in the middle of the night and woke up the next morning to frost on the inside of the van…not happy campers! We had a nap in a sunny lay-by until we had thawed through and then continued on to our first treat on the North Island…The Turangi thermal hot pools!

We could not have planned this better as we treated ourselves to a private pool and it was like a massive hot bath…heaven! We relaxed here for 25 mins and then soaked in the public pool for a bit longer lots of fun :)

Next we went to Taupo and had lunch by the lake and then walked around the small town for a while, it's a lot busier in the north island but it's still beautiful scenery everywhere you turn! On our way to the campsite we visited Huka Falls which was amazing and so loud!

We are hoping it won't be as cold tonight, however just in case I have 5 layers of clothes on, gloves and am currently snuggled up in my sleeping bag like a giant caterpillar…bring it on!

Nite everyone xxx