Wellington is billed as "The coolest little city in the World" and it pretty much is. Lots of stuff going on, a hill for Heather, plenty of bar/restaurants, two cathedrals (old & new) and an excellent museum with free entry. The city itself has a really good vibe and lots of impromptu entertainment like high diving into the quay, points being scored for whoever gets the most spectators wet.

Rainbow Warrior III, the Greenpeace ship was in port …. The original Rainbow Warrior was blown up back in the 60's by the French secret service, to prevent the Greenpeace voyage to Moorea, an island in French Polynesia (the French were conducting nuclear tests in the vicinity) and incidentally it's one of our stops en-route to South America.

After two days we were a little sad to leave and a little sadder because Dan had lost his trusty Tilley hat but travellers must move on …… Napier and the Wine fields beckoned.

Napier was devastated by an earthquake in 1930 and rebuilt in Art Deco style and when we arrived there was a classic British car festival in town - Over 100 classic cars including a number of Jaguars, Aston Martins, MGs, Minis and a number of long forgotten Marques from yesteryear. Having all these cars parked with the backdrop of Art Deco architecture, gave the event a surreal feeling of falling into a time warp. Napier is also centre of the Hawkes Bay wine region and true to form we decided that a cycling tour was in order. The bikes were single gear with inertia braking (pedal backwards to stop) and we cycled 55 Kilometres on these very basic machines only finding two wineries open. We did however sample 13 different wines and the "Elephant Hill" particularly was very nice (so we bought some for later). Interestingly bikes are even harder to control than cars, when you have had a drink or two but the route was off-road and sometimes more off-road than intended.