It was Thursday 2nd September and we were off to Wellington by Intercity bus. During the trip we passed many spectacular mountains on either side of the road, plenty of sheep, cows and a handful of lakes. The bus stopped off for 30 mins so the passengers could grab
some lunch then we continued onwards to the capital, Wellington. We arrived at 5pm and were promptedly greeted by clouds and rain. It felt just like the UK. As locals drive on the same side of the road as we do at home, it could have been London!!! Anyway, we chose to stay at another YHA hostel as they are fun, cheap, conveniently located, helpful and clean. So no bed bugs!!! Also having kitchens, washing machines and tumble dryers makes it feel like home!

This evening, we went to Te Papa Museum situated on the harbour front. It has different themed floors and is well presented so we would have expected to have paid a reasonable entrance fee. We were pleasantly surprised to find out it was free!! The museum is so big that we only looked at 2 floors taking in sculptures, paintings and pottery. One of the levels was named 'our space' and this is where we both decided to go on a virtual cinema ride through fields, roads and water. Unfortunately, this made Lisa feel so sick that we had to get the guy managing the ride to stop it (fortunately no one else was on it). We walked outside as Lisa felt dizzy from the motion sickness. We continued walking around, grabbed a drink and sat down for a while. After a few minutes Lisa felt better so decided to brave the museum's other, more sedate, underwater virtual ride. Big mistake. Lisa felt ill again but luckily she lasted until the ride finished. In her
words, "another minute and I would have been sick". Nice!! Clearly, these rides aren't for Lisa. With that, we decided that it was time to move on and get some fresh air and have some dinner.

We walked around town for a bit and found a Chinese restaurant called Dragons. We soon ordered a starter and 2 main dishes along with rice for two. We were only halfway through the starter before the mains arrived minus the rice. To be honest, we ALMOST got our rice. The waitress actually brought over our bowl of rice more than 10 mins after the rest of the meal but two seconds before it would have been on our table she was told by another group of diners that their rice was wrong. With that she gave them our rice. We couldn't believe it. We sat there speechless. As you can imagine, we were furious. To make matters worse she just walked off.....no apology or explanation. It wasn't too long before Mark was engaged in a heated discussion (albeit one way) during which time the staff confirmed that they gave our rice away!!! Needless to say that Mark told the manageress that we were not paying for any of our food or drink, got them to cancel the bill and we walked out.

We awoke at 8am the next day and had to desperately get our washing done. Mark was seriously running out of clean clothes. It doesn't help when you only have limited space in the rucksack but need to pack clothes for hot (Dubai, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Australia) and cold (New Zealand) weather.

As Mark was tidying up our room, which looked like a bomb had hit it, Lisa decided to take the laptop to the computer shop to see if they could fix the screen while the laundry was on. The screen had been getting worse over the last few weeks and had now stopped altogether. Unfortunately, it would cost NZ$400 to fix the screen and would need to be sent away so this was not an option. We decided that we would probably have to buy another one. More to carry!!!

Today, Mark sorted out all his medical papers, related his trip to the hospital and associated expenses, which he had accumulated over the last 3 weeks as we needed to submit a claim to our insurance company.

It was afternoon by the time we had finished everything so decided to grab some lunch at the Te Papa museum before covering the other tourist attractions.

We then took the cable car tram to the top of the hills overlooking Wellington Harbour. We looked inside the museum there which housed a few old trams. This tramway was constructed by James Fulton and was opened in 1902. It is still running today! It's just a shame the prices are at 2010 rates. We found out that some of the houses that sit at the top of the hills have there own private trams! Obviously rolling in money!

Whilst on the hills we walked around the 25 hectares botanic garden established in 1868. It is protected native forest with a lot of exotic trees and, usually in Spring, exotic flowers.

Back at bottom of the cable car tram we took a tour around the Parliament buildings with a guide explaining how the offices are set up. We were also taken into the chamber equivalent of the House of Commons, which was a bit surreal. It was a very informative tour and we are glad we did it.

We were lucky with the timing because as we left the Parliament tour it began to rain. We headed to Old St Paul's church, which was on our list of photo stops. Our timing was spotted on again as we got there just as they were about to close the doors for an evening of singing, music and happy clapping rehearsals. We took a couple of photos and were gone within three minutes. It was an amazing church unlike a lot of churches we have visited. The church is a wooden gothic revival church. It was constructed entirely from native timbers designed by an English Architect, Reverend Frederick Thatcher.

As we left the church it started to rain harder then came the hail stones! We ducked for cover in Vanilla Cafe as it was really pelting down. Mark needed the toilet so disappeared for a minute. He was gone for quite a long time though. It turns out that as the cafe was due to close one of the staff members had locked some of the access doors and a metal security door round the back. Mark had actually been locked in!! About ten minutes later another member of staff realised what had happened and unlocked the door so Mark could get out.

Afterwards, we found a fantastic Italian restaurant opposite the church called Trattoria. It was the best food we had tasted since our travels.

On our way back to the hostel we had a quick drink in the Thistle Inn pub dating from circa 1840 - the oldest pub in town. It didn't look old inside as it had been restored and now had a modern feel about it. Surprise, surprise, just like every other pub in the country they had rugby on TV......the Kiwis are mad on rugby.

The following morning Mark picked up his phone to see a text from his mum asking whether we were affected by the earthquake. What earthquake? Mark checked the news on the Internet for details and found out it was an Earthquake between 7.0 and 7.4 on the Richter scale. It had occurred a few kilometres west of Christchurch on the South Island at 4:35am. We were on the Southern tip of the North Island but didn't feel anything while asleep although others in the hostel did. The worrying thing was we were getting a ferry and train to Christchurch today. We spoke to our reception who told us that the ferry from Wellington to Picton (South Island) was still running. We got our luggage together and headed for the ferry port with our fingers firmly crossed. At least we were safe......for the moment.

An update will come soon......when/if we get to the South Island.