The drive from Taupo to Wellington was slightly longer than other drives, I think that's why the early start was needed. So we stopped at a little town called Bulls. The towns are a lot less modern and full of quirky buildings. This town had a real sense of humour and every shop had a play on words associated to bulls. The police station was called constu-bull and the other shops all had bull in their name, struggling to remember the now.

On to Wellington and driving into the capital city of New Zealand I decided I wanted to spend more than one night here. I changed my buses and booked my accommodation for 3 nights. I was in a room with 4 bunks, Roz from my bus was in the same room and there was an Italian man in there when we arrived, he was blind. We chatted to him a little and then decided to wander round and go out and get something to eat. We wandered all around the water front, and the city centre and then ended up in a restaurant with a jazz band. To me jazz sounds like the same music being played but it was ok. Next we went to an Irish bar and listened to a singer who was really good and I knew all his songs. He even played the pogues and that was the first Christmas song id heard this year. We had a few drinks and wandered back.

Next day we visited the Te Papa museum. It's a 6 floor museum which is free entry. They have so much there it is difficult to see everything and I'm sure if you read everything it would take you about a week to go round. The most interesting thing I thought was a giant squid they had preserved after a fisherman caught it in Antarctica. It's eye is the biggest eye of any animal in the world. It did look pretty gross actually.

After the museum we had a couple of drinks and decided to get the cable car up to the botanic gardens. It was nice to wander around in the sun, good chance to top up my tan and then we walked to the rose garden which was almost back on the edge of the city. But because we had booked a return ticket on the cable car we climbed the hill back to the top and jumped on the cable car back to the city.

Today is a chilled day. I had a wander round earlier, might go back to the waterfront and read a book. I'm just updating this whilst drinking wine in a bar. This travelling malarkey isn't bad eh?!

xx