Hello from a wet and windy Wellington! Yesterday we drove from New Plymouth to Wellington via Palmerston North (not much to see there). It should have been a 5 hour journey max but ended up being 7 hours thanks to roadworks about 20km north of Wellington. After going round in circles a few times (thanks to various one way systems), we finally found Gilmer Serviced Apartments, where we are staying in a studio for two nights. We are LOVING a little breather from the campervan! It's so nice to have our own little kitchen and bathroom and we are certainly making the most of it!

Wellington is known as the windy city and unfortunately, the weather across the whole of NZ appears to have taken a turn for the worst for at least the next week - until Phil goes home.

We managed to do quite a bit today nonetheless - we meandered round the shops during the heaviest rain, went to Caffe L'Affare for proper English tea and toasted banana bread, and walked up to the summit of Mt Victoria for great views of the city.

We also visited NZ's National Museum - the Te Papa. I'm not generally into museums but the one floor we did explore was pretty interesting. We learnt all about the various fault lines that some of NZ's biggest cities are built on and their history of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In fact, there was an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter Scale when we were at Oakura Beach the other day - the Hills couldn't believe we didn't even notice it! I'm glad I didn't - reckon it would have put me off climbing Mt Taranaki altogether!