Hello everyone!

We do hope you are all well. We have now migrated to the South Island! We arrived yesterday after a VERY rough and windy crossing for 3 and a half hours on the BlueBridge ferry. We spent most of the time outside on the side of the ship watching the waves crashing and the ship bobbing up and down like a cork! Sitting inside was not a good plan.... the motion made both of us feel a bit ill! We did have a bit of a mare when trying to get off the ferry at Picton. I was worried that we'd be late back to our car (and us being the first car to exit the ferry, i didn't want to have everyone waiting for us!) so we queued with others to get back to the car 5 mins before the doors opened. We got to our car and waited for the signal to start our engines to drive out... only, Angela wouldn't start!! Disaster, we tried again and again. Nothing. Thankfully the crewman got on the radio for someone to bring up a jump starter , who came reasonably quickly. But we were right in the way of traffic getting off. Very embarrassing as everyone looked on at us sitting there, heads hanging in shame! We reckon it was listening to the radio without the engine on for 45 mins that must've run down the battery, but she started fine this morning! :)

We spent 3 days in Wellington, arriving on Saturday 9th to some blue skies. We walked around for a bit that day then went for dinner at mum's uni friend Janet's. The next day we headed to Te Papa, the museum. We ended up spending about 4 hours wandering around, and seeing the giant colossal squid at 4.5metres in the nature section. Pretty impressive. We decided that night that for the first time since we left the UK we'd treat ourselves to a meal out, so we headed to Chow, an Asian/Chinese/Thai place. The food was delicious and we thoroughly enjoyed it. That was the night of 120km/h winds and lots of rain. Not the best weather you'll agree. It all suddenly stopped in the middle of the night, which we were relieved about considering we would be on the ferry the next day! On sunday we headed to Weta Caves, the little exhibition of Peter Jackson & co's work, mini sculptures of characters and a little movie. It was smaller than we'd expected and didn't go into very much detail which was a little disappointing but non the less, a good time. We made our way back into the city to find the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens. The weather wasn't great, but it was good enough to walk around the gardens and appreciate them. They have the NZ national observatory there, but it's been shut for over a year and due to reopen mid-Feb. Very disappointed for me - we've tried to go to 3 so far, and none of them have been open!

So, before we arrived in Wellington, we had left Waimarama and our WWOOF-ing family on New Years Day after having spent New Years Eve at Andy's gig (the farmer is also a drummer for a band). We met lots of people that night and some good old Poms!! It was nice to be around the same humour and accent for a while, very refreshing. Anyway, we headed from Hastings across the Gentle Annie towards Taihape stopping overnight at a campsite at Kuripapango. From there we drove to Okahune to get to the Tongariro Crossing, which unfortunately due to high winds, was "shut". So we drove up the mountain road to a campsite, from which we could see the mountains, including Mount Doom! The next day we walked the Old Coach Road to 2 viaducts, one very old one, and the new one. The old one was 46m high and a little vertigo inducing but a great view of the valley below.

From there we took the 'Forgotten Highway' to get to New Plymouth. To be honest, apart from the gorge in the middle, it was pretty sparse and unexciting but a LOT of hills and steep climbs for the car. there were however some spectacular views of the ranges. We spent 2 days in New Plymouth, exploring the city, doing the coastal walkway and then going to the Festival Of Lights in the evening. The music was pretty rubbish - the band looked a little confused, looking like rastifarians who'd been on a jog to the 80's playing 70s love songs! but the lights were great, they'd illuminated the whole park with different coloured lights - we'll attempt to get these pics up finally! Beautiful. After New Plymouth, we headed onto Surf Highway around the West Cape and down to Hawera for a night at a farmstay in our tent. The next day (yet another grey day) we walked up the water tower for a gander at the surroundings. There wasn't a lot to look at, it was more like an industrial estate with a few houses thrown in!!

So, that's a brief summary of the past couple of weeks. We've changed our flights to Oz - we're leaving New Zealand on the 27th April now, so that gives us some time to do the south island and explore some more. And on the bonus side of things it keeps us from melting in the swealtering heat over the Tasman!

Lots of love to you all,

David and Rachel xxxx