Day 24 - Kaikoura to Wellington - March 2nd

A day of coach journeys, a ferry ride and a lot of sleep. The end!

Can't really say much more than that! Nice day again weather wise, so nice to chill out on the deck of the ferry. Wellington is nothing like anything we saw in the south island - much more city like. Lots of roads, traffic, buildings, noise, people and so on. Nice enough though to have a wander around.

Tuesday 3rd March - Wellington

Had a wander around the streets of Wellington and visited the famous Cuba Street where there were lots of clothes shops, a bit of an alternative feel to it a bit like Camden, a few buskers too which was cool.This more or less filled the day up wandering around a lot of Wellington and discovering that parts of it were actually quite nice. Visited the government buildings and the bee hive building and had a pretty chilled out evening playing killer pool and losing.

Wednesday 4th March - Wellington

After meeting up with Jamie, Suzie and their friends who were getting married on Friday, we all took a visit down to te Papa museum - a huge really good free museum about New Zealand, the world, space - basically everything. Only spent the morning there due to time but saw quite a bit and experienced a small "earthquake" which was just a room shaking but i'm sure that's what a real earthquake feels like anyway. After the others went off, me and Rich began our first of 3 days of becoming alcoholics. As it was student night and $4 beer night we thought we would investigate the bar in the hostel and then head into town, only after investigating a bottle of vino each in our room. This led to a night of drunkenness, much amusement, talking to pretty much everyone we saw and upsetting the Scottish girl in our room at about half 4 in the morning.

Thursday 5th March - Wellington

Met up with Jamie and Suzie at around midday due to the lack of sleep and inevitable hangover. Didnt feel too bad though so decided to go for one of the recommended walks down Oriental Parade and up to Mount Victoria. It was a nice walk along the harbour, and endeared me more to Wellington than my first impressions. Had a few photo stops and a lunch break and then headed up mount Victoria to get to the viewpoint over the town and the outskirts of Wellington. Took about an hour or so to get there and gave some pretty cool views.

Continuing our alcoholics theme, we cracked open the vino again in the evening and hit the town again - however after Wednesday night the sensible people are in bed on Thursday night, so town was empty and me and Rich joined everyone else by going to bed pretty early.

Friday 6th March - Wellington

Quite a chillaxed day today involving purchasing a basketball, playing basketball, eating pizza, watching/falling asleep through a DVD and then back onto the vino for a Friday night in town. Very good night again, very busy in town, lots of backpackers around and this time quite a few Kiwis to chat to also. Had a cool night - think Rich was worried about his feet because he had to wear his sports trainers to be able to get into the bar. Plenty of banter and chit chat all round, spent about 3 hours talking to a "townie" who wasn't really a townie from Brighton about pretty much everything.

Saturday 7th march - Wellington to Taupo

We arrived in Taupo just after lunch time and settled into our hostel called the Urban Retreat. Taupo contains New Zealands largest lake, over 600km in diameter, formed by a volcanic eruption in 186AD (or there abouts). Apparently it could be seen as far away as Rome! Beause of this there is a lot of geothermal activity around, and therefore there are a few hot springs, so this is where we decided to walk to to take up the afternoon. It took about an hour or so through the thermal springs park, passing the Taupo bunjy and then we got there. The springs were steaming which was quite cool (oxymoron) and they even had a little waterfall which was warm enough to be a shower. We sat in these springs for quite a while then meandered our way back to the hostel feeling refreshed and cleaned to the pores - or not, as the water itself was mucky and probably contaminated by the amount of people who sit in it and small children who invariably piss in it. Dinner was a bargain $5 chille con carne, although we refused the beer after last nights escapades.