North Island finished!

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Finished our time on the North Island, got to Wellington yesterday.

Driving up to Wakapapa was stunning, there were 3 mountains in that region including 'Mt. Doom' from the LOTR movie, which is volcano shapped, but at this time of year was covered in snow. Really stunning, we had great plans to drink hot chocolate in the posh hotel up there and admire the view but they were rude and wouldn't serve us so we didn't. To be fair we very rarely change our clothes at the moment, mainly because it's too cold to take off your clothes and warm up some clean ones.

So from there we drove the 'forgotten highway' to Straford. Basically it was this road which everyone had made a big fuss about saying we shouldn't drive it because it's the wrong time of year, it's not surfaced all the way, no petrol stations etc etc. We decided to be extreme and do it anyway, it was anything but extreme although it was windy and with lots of big drops right at the edge of the road. Scenery was amazing and the area was about 200 years behind the rest of the world. We got stuck behind about 300 sheep for 20 minutes or so and went to the one town which is an hours drive away from anywhere. Really was nowheresville and had 1 pub, which was closed because the town was without power that day. James had a chat with the 1 local we saw and he was lacking in brain power and appeared to be drunk. Straford was averagely dull, we were the only people bar 1 other car in the camp site. NZ likes to build mock tutor houses and Straford had a few classics.

Waking up in Stratford we cancelled the days plans, to drive up the mountain and then follow the coastal road, as the weather was awful and grey and we wouldn't have been able to see anything at all. Drove straight down to Wellington and watched the All Blacks play Australia in the tri-nations. Couldn't believe how empty Wellington was on a Saturday night, wasn't hard to get a table during the match and the city emptied once it was over. Today I spent the day in the car sleeping, eating porridge and sudafed in an attempt to get over my cold. Is a shame since Wellington is a really nice town but I'm determined to get better and enjoy the South Island.

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