Wellington

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Day 34 - Tues March 9th

In Wanganui there is an elevator which goes into the ground and then up to a view point. It is the only earthbound elevator in NZ and one of only two in the world. So we thought we might as well go and check it out whilst here but when we saw that we needed to walk 216m underground we decided our weary legs could do with a rest and just headed back onto the road, picking up a couple of milkshakes from an American Diner along the way.

We reached Wellington and realised that as with most towns the campsites are no where near the town centre and this was a fairly extreme case. The nearest campsite was 12km away from town and was in the middle of an industrial estate, so we gave up on that one and thought maybe we would head into town because and drive around to see if perhaps we could find a cheap B&B. Wellington is a fairly big town and not somewhere that is easy to drive around in a campervan. One of the sights we wanted to visit was the Botanical Gardens so we parked up near there and had a wander around, saw the rose garden, some random art and went to the tram/cable car museum. Apparently some of the private houses in Wellington have their own cable cars to get the residents up steep hills to their homes - how cool. When we got back to the van we had a ticket on it, but luckily it was only a caution. We thought we had parked in the wrong place, but apparently in NZ it illegal to park on the wrong side of the road ie facing the traffic. A good rule I suppose, but no one had warned us about it, so lucky that we only got a caution, not a fine!

We got stressed looking for accommodation so decided to stay at a campsite even further away, but it was in a nice quiet location.

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