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Published: February 21st 2007
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350 km to Wellywood at least thats what they call Wellington now days, Lord of the rings and all that. About 10km out of new Plymouth we stopped briefly at Lake Mangamahoe to feed chocolate biscuits to the ducks and to take a few shots of Mt Taranaki its quite an impressive sight.
The volcano is 2518m high and has been dormant for about thyree centuries and is due to explode some day soon. After a few more hours driving we stopped at a small place called Shannon to visit 'Owlcatraz', it was as eccentric as it sounded and a bit cheesey too. We did see Owl Capone and Owl Mcpherson (you see what I mean) before heading down the back to look at blind pigs and huge cows, still it was a chance to stretch our legs and see the chinchillas.
Wellington is also a harbour city and has a lot of one way streets, despite this we found our hostel quickly and managed to get a park right out the front. The hostel is painted like a zebra and our room on the second floor is jammed in between the showers but although small is of a
good standard.
After settling in, it was time to go for a walk along the water front, its a windy and cold place so we retired to a bar for an ale or three. They have an extreme games here at the moment so the city is full of skate boarding knobs, after dodging a few we stopped at a Turkish cafe for iskender before doing our first load of washing for the trip.
I had a shocking nights sleep the place was full of drunken BMX and Skateboard clowns and the noise went on all night so I was in sore need of the huge English breaky I had, after that it was of to see parliament house and the Beehive. The Beehive looks like a huge darlik and is a bit of an eyesore to boot. We then took a cable car which chugged up the hill to the Botanic Gardens it was very reminiscent to the Peak tram in Hong kong. Next stop was Te Papa Museum and yes it was extremely good too, but I think we are museumed out by now so we did it quite quickly, poor old Phar Lap they have
his heart in Canberra, his skin in Melbourne and his skeleton in Wellington.
Sunday night was much quieter and I was able to sleep, which was good because we checked out and returned the car to the hire company who then dropped us off at the ferry terminal for our trip to the south island. The crossing took roughly three hours and the trip was comfortable. About an hour from Picton we entered Marlborough sound which has some spectacular scenery.
We were met at Picton by the car hire company who took us to our vehicle (a silver Pulsar this time) and began the 155km drive to Kaikoura. We decided to stay at a place called "Donegals House" and Irish Pub in the countryside 3km fro Kaikoura. The pub was an exact replica of one in Donegal built in 1865, it took me less than five minutes to tuck into my first Guinness, I struck up a conversation with an old Kiwi couple, the bloke seemed really familiar but I could not think where I had seen him before, it turned out he was the old guy from those old Colby Mainland Cheese adds.
After a big
Chinchilla
First one of these I have ever seen fat (expensive ) steak and another half dozen pints we staggered off to bed.
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