Wellington - the capital of NZ but not the biggest city (that's Auckland). We arrived there after our rapid escape from South Island at 10-00pm in the dark. Fortunately we'd checked on internet & found a freedom camping site on the waterfront (the municipal swimming pool carpark !) - our first "urban" freedom camping site. It's not the best night's sleep we've had in NZ - but it was free & no-one had a problem with us being there.

Next day the storm we'd avoided on the ferry caught us up so it was raining & windy. That didn't stop us visiting Wellington - such a small place for a capital city. It has the same sort of reputation in NZ as Brussels does in the EU - full of useless bureaucrats that everyone else in the country loves to hate. We spenta pleasant day in the rain visiting the sights such as the cable car and even got to see a political demonstation in front of Parliament by some maoris who were against some development plan or other - a few hundred people waving the "other" NZ flag(the black, red & white one with maori type symbols on it & not the blue one with the union jack in the corner).

That evening we headed out of Wellington with the commuters & then over a very impressively steep mountain pass in torrential rain to the Wairarapa area where we spent a very damp night in a forest campsite. Next day we went to see the farm near Martinborough where our neice Kayleigh had spent 6 months.

Martinborough was such a nice town - the street "grid" for the centre was laid out like a union jack flag but it was strange, it felt like we could have been in Vaux or le Perreon. There were grape vines everywhere, just like in France, all the service industries were wine related, it was a "wine" town - but not in crisis like in France. It felt well off, just like it had in the Beaujolais when we arrived there in 1994.

It was interesting, but a bit depressing thinking of our friends in the Beaujolais who are struggling so much to compete with areas like this all over the New World.