After a few hours sleep, we woke up with very sore heads and still very tired...but we had to leave the Motorhome Park by 10am! We slowly packed up and then made our way 1km down the road to a car park, where we paid our fee then went back to sleep! After another few hours we were feeling a little better so ventured over the road to the supermarket and bought some food to feed our hangover hunger! We ate in the van then set off to Petone and our home for the nigh...

Today was a massive day for everyone in NZ - the opening of the 2011 Rugby World Cup! We started off by saying thank you and goodbye to Great Aunty Mary - she's been a fantastic host over the past few days and we've enjoyed staying with her and meeting all of my distant family - they're a friendly lot and all went out of their way to make us feel welcome. We drove back to Wellington and to our home for the night at the Waterfront Motorhome Park - the most expens...

This morning we went into Upper Hutt again so Dave could get his hair cut at the barbers, and we could hand in our 2 books in exchange for the ones we bought yesterday. Mary had offered to drive us over the mountain to the Wairopa Valley and had made sandwiches so we bought some cakes to take with us too. Back at Mary's, we packed up her car with the food (and some bottles of Tui) and we hit the road. We drove over the mountain on the windy roads, and through th...

This morning I phoned Amanda and spoke to her for the first time since we left. It was really good to catch up! We left Mary's late morning and headed to Miramar on the other side of Wellington, to the Weta Cave. The Weta Workshop is famous for film production and they've made props etc for lots of films including the LOTR trilogy and Avatar. We watched a DVD presentation on what goes on in all the different departments which was very interesting. They also had a...

When we woke up today we found a note from Mary (who had gone to Tai Chi!) saying her daughter Fiona had invited us to her house for tea, and we could drive there as it was on our way back from Wellington. So we text Fiona to accept, and set out for Wellington again. On the way, we stopped and booked to stay at the Motorhome site on the waterfront for Friday night, even though it was really expensive - we wanted to be near the action on Friday night - the opening...