We left Rainbow Lodge-slightly sad-in the early morning and headed down to Wellington. The scenery on our way down was spectacular, going round the lake was a bit hairy-the roads were very windy and there was a sheer drop down to the lake-eek! As we got further down it turned into more deserty terrain with mountain ranges everywhere-as you can see from the pics. We were lucky enough to pass through the army training ground and as a result we passed 15 trucks full of lovely army clad men-yummy!! Needless to say our eyes weren't on the road as much as they should have been-oops!! But don't worry we are still alive!!!

As we got closer to Wellington we drove along the ragged coastline, Laura thought maybe there were seals in the water (from a distance), but as Fi pointed out they were actually rocks!! We eventually got to Wellington after a 5 hour drive and after gettinbg lost only once in the city we arrived at our hostel- Rowena's Lodge.

What can we say about Rowena's Lodge? It was FOUL. The bathroom and kitchen looked like they hadn't been cleaned since 1735, it was really toe-curling. The less said the better. Thankfully we had a private triple which wasn't that bad. Also the view from the hostel over the city was amazing, as it was up on one of the hills that surrounds the city. It was especially spectacular at night with all the lights-however not so easy to capture on film! After dumping our stuff we legged it into Wellington after deciding we would not be spending much time there-just to sleep!!! We got our bearings of the city before having Nando's for dinner-we thought that we would treat ourselves after the scabby hostel experience. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as home and was actually quite dissapointing.We then found a really nice cinema that was showing The Good Shepherd, so decided to watch that. The theatre was tiny and all the seats were sofas-so we each had our own sofa!!!! Was very comfy and very cheap-4 pounds!!!

The next morning we had to brave the shower......

We headed straight to the Te Papa museum in the city, which is New Zealands national museum, and is totally free! After looking at some really interesting exhibits we wandered around the shops before grabbing dinner and heading to the Sports Bar. A quiz had already started but we made ourselves useful by helping the locals with all the british questions. We also found a shop that printed designs on t-shirts so we decided to get one for our trip. So now we are all proud owners of black t-shirts with our names and the year on the back-in neon pink- and 'World Trip feb 2007-July 2007' embroidered in pink on the front-they are so cool!!!

Our final day in Wellington took us to Katherine Mansfield's Birthplace which is on the other side of the city to where we were staying so it meant we could capture the whole city including the parliament buildings. Visiting her house was really interesting for Sam who had read a lot of her stories, she could see where all her ideas came from. It was also interesting for Lau and Fi who were completly ignorant when it came to all her work as it told you all about her life-which was impressive considering how short it was. We then went up in the cable car to the Botanic Gardens, where we spent the afternoon relaxing, reading and organising the rest of our trip. We ended our stay in Wellington by going to some of it's bars, before returning to the hell hole for our last night.