After a 3 hour ferry ride, where sophie managed to eat 3 almond slices to prevent starvation, due to this being the only food we had on us before the car deck was closed for the entire journey, we arrived at the port in Wellington. Driving into Wellington, the sudden amount of people and cars hit us, having to relearn to drive in a busy city, with numerous one way roads where you inevitably missed the turning you needed a few times before eventually swerving into it last minute! With a real lack of camping areas around, we pulled into Rowenas Place, a tiny sloped car park outside a grotty hostel, which took all sorts of embarrassing manoeuvring to get parked in while people watched on in amusement. Add to this the grumpy caretaker living in a hut in the car park, who at 7.50pm came out and asked us to be quiet and stop opening and shutting our van doors as people on night shifts were still sleeping...with a few sarcastic responses between him and Sophie, we soon ensured we made far more noise than before. Every time anyone shut their car door an anguished shout of "for f*** sake" emerged from the hut, much to our amusement! That evening we decided to go and explore the night scene around Wellington, and sampled a few "craft beers" in Cambridge Street and Cuba Street. The craft beers which Wellington is famous for are all locally brewed beers in a variety of flavours. Wandering through the night market and avoiding the more chavvy scene that some of the bars had, we enjoyed a few hours outside of Barry in the evening, before heading back and slamming our door as hard as we could!

The next morning we made sure we beeped the horn upon leaving the hostel car park, in the hope of hearing one last "for f*** sake". It was Mothers Day back home, so we made sure to send home some E-cards before heading down to the farmers market in the harbour, where we sampled some Hungarian "Langosh"; fried and salted bread. That afternoon we spent a couple of hours in the "Te Papa" museum, full of earthquake, maori and wildlife information and artefacts, topped off by a giant pickled colossal squid, and a giant Lord of The Rings model (called Azog according to Trevor). Following on from this we visited the "Weta Cave", the workshop where they put on some of the props and costumes used in films such as Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, and King Kong, and where Trevor happily got his photo with a big Lord of the Rings troll model. That evening we drove down to a free camping spot along a river near Martinborough...free camping near a river can only mean one thing...free shower time, this one being relatively warm compared to our recent wild washing experiences!

Having rained all night, the rain unfortunately wasn't stopping the next day, when we had planned to do some wine tasting. After Sophie Skyped her mum, we nonetheless planned our wine tasting for the next day in Martinborough and far outstayed our welcome in a coffee shop for a few hours using their free wifi. The day was spent updating blog, doing some shopping, flattening our car battery again having left the lights on, which a kind old man helped us to jump start whilst telling us his life story, and spent the evening at a campsite in nearby Masterton. Next morning, despite a bit of drizzle, we headed back to Martinborough, checked into a campsite and hired push bikes to tour the local vineyards, by which time the rain had luckily stopped! Setting off pretty steadily on our bikes we dropped into our first vineyard, where we both signed up to a wine tasting session - about 6 wines each for 5NZ dollars a person. After this we decided we'd share tasting sessions to be in with any chance of managing to get back to our campsite at the end!! We visited about 7 vineyards, all of which varied in quality, and in the character who served us the wine. We knew very little about wine and couldn't say anything vaguely professional about what we tasted! One guy originally from England did try to teach us about aerating the wine in our glass and then sucking it into your mouth before swirling it around to get the most flavour from the wine, although we could never identify the flavours in each until he pointed them out! Nonetheless, by the end of the day we had decided on three bottles of wine we wanted to purchase and send back home; whether they are good or not we will have to decided when we are back, because we're not sure how accurate our judgement was by that time! Wobbling back to our campsite we cooked up some dinner and spent the evening chatting to a lady from Quebec, Caroline, while the hangover started setting in.

Next day Sophie abused the fee wifi again to Skype her dad, then we headed up to Napier 4 hours away to stay with Ted and Steph; Bess' brother and sister in law that she had kindly offered for us to stay with. Once again we were treated to our own bedroom, an indoor bathroom, carpet, and proper roast potatoes for the first time since we left home! Ted had some interesting stories of his travels to the Middle East, Africa and Europe when he was younger and some impressive photos to show us! Trevor also enjoyed swapping stories of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with Ted! The next day we tried steak and cheese pies, which are very popular throughout New Zealand, visited Trevor's hostel he stayed in the previous time he went travelling for nostalgia's sake, and admired the Art Deco feel of Napier post the earthquakes that destroyed the town in 1931. That afternoon we drove up to "Sleeping Giant Hill" which gave us a fantastic view of Napier, Hastings and the surrounding countryside and coastline. We were once again treated to a yummy dinner, homemade scones and even a choc ice which reminded Sophie of home!

On the 20th March after saying our goodbyes to Ted and Steph who had once again welcomed us with such generous hospitality, we headed east, briefly stopping at Lake Waikaremoana, before heading to Mahia Peninsula where we camped up for free right on the beach front. The rugged beach front provided a perfect view to watch the sun go down over, once again going to sleep to the sound of crashing waves. Next morning we set of to Gisborne, the first place in New Zealand where Captain Cook landed on his discovery of the country, and after spending the day milling around, we gave into the temptation of chicken at KFC and stayed the night at a Maori filled campsite.

Deciding to take the longer but more scenic East Coast Route towards Rotorua rather than through the middle of the North Island, our first stop was at Tolaga Bay, home to the longest wharf in NZ at 660m; just a quick km walk to stretch our legs! Carrying on we stopped at Waipiro Bay to have lunch. The bay was set in a Maori village, but was completely deserted and beautiful. We sat at a picnic table on the beach made from driftwood, hoping that we weren't sitting on private Maori land; we didn't want to be at the wrath of the Maori's! Refreshed from such a lovely setting we set off further north, blasting out the local Maori radio station, full of reggae/Hawaiian kind of tunes...when we say blasting, we mean to say at a slight amplitude that Barry could handle before his speakers started crackling with the non existent base - we liked to think he was singing along...by this time we had become far too attached to Barry! Stopping at Tikitiki, a village which seemed to be deserted apart from a large amount of cats strolling the streets, we soon found the whole Maori population were in the local supermarket "Four Square", jovially going about their shopping...we felt very out of place! A little uneasy at the strange ghost like town with each house seeming to have at least 4 trashed cars in their front garden, we headed out, stopping on the way at "St Mary's Church", which was full of elaborate Maori carvings and bright tapestries. That evening we camped up at a DOC campsite once again on the coast, near the tip of the East Cape, a few kilometres along a narrow bumpy gravel road. Although very basic, the view once again made up for that, and the positioning was perfect for what we needed...

Next morning we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 5.30am to drive a few more kilometres and walk 20 minutes up some steps to the East Cape Lighthouse for sunrise. Watching the sun come up this far east made us pretty much the first people in the world to see the sun rise that day, and the views were spectacular, which we sat and admired for over an hour; the sky, sun and sea all changing colour and character every few minutes before our eyes. Pleased that getting up early had truly been worth it, we begun to head West along the coast, passing through a number of small towns with only a few houses and shops in, until we got to glimpse "White Island", a 'chain-smoking' active volcano way out in the Pacific Ocean off the Bay of Plenty, where you could see smoke emerging even from the mainland. After lunch by the river in Whakatane, it was time to head inland to Rotorua.

We were surprisingly pleased we had chosen the east cost route, as although longer it had provided us again with some stunning scenery, beautifully natural camping spots, and a small insight into local Maori towns!