Thursday 20^th November

Today we had a lie in and ate our fruit followed by scrambled eggs about 9am. As in Darwin the landlady stocks the fridge with breakfast ingredients and you cook them when you want to which gives greater flexibility as to timings. Our landlady then very kindly drove us down to town where we took the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens where we wandered around the sculpture trail and had alight lunch in the cafe.

We then caught a free shuttle bus to Zealandia (a nature reserve where they keep out predators such as goats, rats, cats, dogs, deer, possums so that the native birds can breed and be preserved) and, having spent an hour in their exhibition centre, were joined by William and Daphne for a couple of hours walk through the valley. It was very pleasant although it got quite cold and Iain had no coat as this morning the sun was shining when we set out. We saw lots of birds – especially the KaKa and the Tui, as well as Robins, Fantails, Pigeon, Ducks of various sorts – and a Tuatara which is a large lizard type creature.

Having returned to town on the cable car we bought some chicken, salad and wine for dinner and made our way back on the bus.

Wednesday 19^th November

Today we had convent eggs for breakfast. These are like coddled eggs with bacon underneath – very tasty! We then drove through beautiful New Zealand countryside again on a fairly minor road which we felt was more interesting than the main route albeit slower with all the bends and varying gradients.

We stopped at a café in a small village called Pongaroa for some lunch and then continued onwards. The winds were quite exciting but luckily although there was a fair bit of debris around we didn’t encounter any trees blocking the road. The whole journey took about six hours but we arrived in Wellington and found our way, thanks to the sat nav! We are staying at another really lovely B&B – a self contained apartment really - a bedroom/living room/ kitchen, and a bathroom together with a laundry room.

In the evening we drove across town to where William and Daphne (Dashfield) live and helped eat some excellent curries that Daphne had prepared. We didn’t get to bed until gone 11pm – very late for us this trip!