Hey everyone! As you can guess we are now in the North island, not really had time to look around Wellington as yet again this morning we had an early pick up and didn't arrive here til gone 5pm.

This morning's coach journey with our driver "Paul" (possibly known as Paulline at the weekend?) was boring. Boring because all Natalie really saw for the whole 2.5 hours was the back of her eyelids. Nathan tried to obtain a good view of his own eyelids, but was quite possibly kept awake by the seemingly bizarre relationship "Paul" had with a fellow passenger (We couldn't quite decide if she was A; his proper legal wife, and was out for a trip to go shopping somewhere B; his bit on the side who was going shopping with his credit card to buy new kinky underwear C; another employee of Intercity who was there to ensure Paul could actually drive a coach (debatable!) D; a random passenger who wanted a fling with Paul (?) E; "Paulline's" Friend from the weekend who happens to go by the name of "Steve" (highly probable whether Paul became Paulline or not) or F; all, or a combination of all the above options. They did appear quite smitten with each other)

Anyway, we got to Picton in one piece where we entered the ferry terminal building, And waited... and waited..... and waited..... In hindsight, we could have nipped into Picton in the 2 hours we had spare, but as Natalie had just woken up (she's not really ummmmm..... enthusiastic when she wakes up) and Nathan was quite content to just look at Picton through the windows, we didn't bother.

The interislander ferry was HUGE, and unlike Condor ferries it was clean, well maintained and didn't break down. We stayed outside for about 3 minutes as the ship left the dock; the scenery was quite impressive seeing as we were sailing out of another Fiord (Charlotte's Sound off the top of my head?) but somewhat spoilt by the abundant concentration of chavs having a fag. So what do a couple of snobbish, chav hating people like us do? Pay a reasonable $40 each (thats £20) to go into the club lounge, where the likelihood of there being chavs or massive groups of loud Japanese tourists is equal to the probability of Nathan declaring an undying passion for marmite smeared over the hairy chest of Scary Psycho Steve the bus driver, and them eloping with a bag full of neon shell suits and living a garage in downtown Crewkerne; or Natalie saying she actually hates horses, and thinks their rightful place on earth is next to roast potatoes and a couple of steamed carrots.

The £20 it cost us (each) seemed slightly extravagent until we actually got inside the lounge - where we had unlimited access to hot food (curry and macaroni cheese) snacks (fresh pies, quiches, sarnies, fruit, cakes, biscuits etc etc) hot drinks (including proper coffees and posh teas) and bottled juices and fizzy drinks. To say we got our money's worth could be an understatement. We ate and drank as much as we could in the three hour journey, we relaxed on the mega comfy sofas, and tried (and failed) to stifle our giggles when the man behind us fell asleep and, in an artistic manner, demonstrated great skill in replicating the various noises commonly heard from pigs. We identified grunting, snorting, snuffling, sniffing, and think the rarer noise heard when pigs get excited... it was kinda like a snort-slight squeel-grunt-snort then rapid breathing for the next minute. We did have to move seats after a while, we'd kinda got a bit bored (and repulsed) by the whole pig recital and were struggling to contain our laughter (not helped by the Aussie's sat opposite, who were also trying to stop laughing)

Got off the boat then had a quick (scary) ride round Wellington - OMG is all we can say. It's manic. Our B&B http://www.booklovers.co.nz/index.php/index/ is fab - the owner made us a cuppa as soon as we walked through the door, and offered us the choice of rooms. Of course, we chose the one we were closest too (she did say it was the only one with a bath!) Went out for a quick bite to eat, then walked home quite quickly as we're both a bit tired tonight. Guess what - another early start tomorrow, transferring out of Welly to Taupo (YEY). Shame we're not staying in this B&B, but hey ho the one we're going to has a jacuzzi and swimming pool. May well have to use them!

Gonna go have a soak (and shave my legs...) in the roll-top victorian bath now! Nathan continues his daily application of female moisturiser, and the jammy git is going brown :-P So will bid you all farewell, and good night/morning!

Love to you all x x x x x x x x x

(considering we haven't actually done anything today - this is a loooong blog! well done for reading, you deserve a cookie, or cake, or bacon sandwich.)