Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

We arrived in Wellington at 1am and parked the car under a tree in a train station car park and slept. When we woke we checked into a campsite before driving into the city to explore. Wellington is nice but not particulary overwhelming in any respect for a capital city. It has a great position overlooking the harbour, some beautiful looking buildings and lots of great museums. One in particular is the Te Papa museum which is Wellingtons showpiece museum which exhibits everything from natural history, science and technology, loads of interactive stuff for the kids (like me), european history in NZ, Maori History in NZ and the Pacific Islands and lots of other specialist exhibitions (incl. Lord of the rings, Japenese art amongst others). Entrance is free with the exception of the specialist exhibits which is a big plus.

We took a ride on the funicular tram which climbs the wellington hillside from which you would normally expect a fantstic vantage point from which to view a city but with their not being much to look down upon this was kind of redundant. Nevertheless the tram journey itself and the tram museum at the top is worth the $2 fare. We were pushed for time now and we wanted to see much more of the North island so only spent 1 day in Wellington before heading North east towards the town of Napier.

The town of Napier and some surrounding towns are famous for their Art Deco architecture. A couple of hours wandering the streets is all we needed here because the place is pretty small. Nice but small.

From Napier we called the company who provide transport into the Tongarirro National park as we wanted to try for the 2nd time to make the 1 day Tongarirro Crossing. The guy on the phone just laughed and asked if we were joking....of course the weather was horrific and there was no way that we could do the crossing. It just wasn´t meant to be! With no trek possible we just drove on through Taupo towards Rotorua. Just North of Taupo we stopped to look at the `Craters of the Moon` which is an eerie looking park alive with geothermal activity, clouds of gas emerging from holes in the ground and of course the familiar rotton egg smell which you have to get used to in this region.