Day 32 Wellington Another sunny day in Wellington, two on the trot, given the weather in New Zealand so far I don't believe it will last. Took the cable car up to the botanical gardens this morning, one way this time so we can walk back down through the gardens. Before we set off we went into the cable car museum and discovered that this is not the only cable car in Wellington; such is the small amount of available land in the city there are many houses built ...

Day 31 Picton to Wellington Well here we are on the North Island. The trip over on the Islander ferry this morning was perfect, calm and sunny, what more could one ask for. They said we might see whales or dolphins, well no whales sadly but we saw a huge number of dolphins in the calm waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. There must have been 30 or so of them fishing. Our only complaint was that the ferry was going so fast we were past them before we could get any de...

Day 30 Nelson to Picton Ohmigod I think I felt the earth move last night! We woke in the middle of the night to a really loud noise and a lurching to the van, like something had either fallen on or against it. On checking there was no one around and it was a relatively calm night with a starlit sky, also no trees in the immediate vicinity. Later on I also felt a shuddering sensation similar to going over a cattle grid which lasted for only a few seconds - was...

Day 29Tahuna Bay, Nelson Day dawned bright and sunny as forecast so we decided that we had had enough driving for a while and stayed put in Nelson for the day. Talk about coincidence, a Dutch couple that we were talking to at a campsite a couple of days ago at Greymouth were parked close to us here and they are on the same ferry to Wellington as well so we shared some of the experiences we had both encountered. After breakfast, a big fry up cooked by Bill, we ...

Day 28 Kaikoura to Nelson Can't believe it's been four weeks already…. The title today should be wet, wet, wet….woke this morning to a really grey day again and blowing a gale, well they did forecast it so I shouldn't be surprised; awfully glad we didn't go on the whale watch. If it wasn't cancelled which it may well have been it would have been very rough and with the visibility down to just a few yards so spotting anything other than white horses would ha...