We spent the morning walking around Wellington, taking pictures of the Embassy cinema where Jo tells me the Lord of the Rings films were premiered, which is pretty swish. Right opposite the cinema was a little pub called The Welsh Dragon, not swish at all, just boarded up! We'd parked up near the government buildings to take pictures there, but decided to move further into town to look around there, unfortunately this was when we had to remember the warnings about how tall the van was. As I pulled into a multi-storey car park we suddenly noticed the height restriction of 2.05m, I stepped out to have a look and saw that we would be lucky to scratch under it and so made a swift exit. Luckily there weren't any cars behind me, but unfortunately there was no way to get out once you'd gone in, and so after waiting for the lights to let us out for at least ten minutes I simply had to pull out when safe and hope no police sirens went off!

To get over the calamity, we bought some pastries from a little bakery and made our way through the rain to the van to start our trip to Rotorua!

More steep and winding hills ensued before lunch in Bulls, and then it was Jo's turn to drive as we went through a blanket of fog in the hills. Unfortunately the fog meant we somehow missed the mountain that was known as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films, the mountain that is viewable from space! Miraculously the fog cleared as we descended, but it was too late to see Mount Doom. Sad times.

Poor map reading on my part followed as we turned off at Taupo onto the number 5 highway, but in the wrong direction! We both talked about the names Napier and Hastings, but neither of us cottoned on that we didn't want to go in their direction until Jo realised about 40km out of Taupo! Ooops! Any confidence Jo had lacked before was gained as we raced back toward Taupo and onward to Rotorua in Formula One time. Whilst we did get a little lost in Rotorua around the lakefront we eventually found a campervan site, and whilst closed it did have a sign for late arrivals, and so we pitched there and would pay in the morning. Unfortunately we had to get food and so drove to Joe's for toasted sandwiches, but had lost our spot, but the another one was free, phew!

The mishaps of the day were made more bearable by a text from Mum saying that she and Dad had failed to find the car park in Manchester and so missed their shuttle to the cruise pick-up point! A bad day for Smiths and maps in general!