Heading South

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Panorama: Wellington Harbor

We left Wanganui Friday morning, after sensibly deciding not to kidnap Billy. I'm sure he's much happier chomping on twigs by the river than cooped up in the back of our van. We've decided to get our very own Billy one day, when we've got somewhere suitable to keep him.

And we nearly fell over when we realised it's now February! Someone's messing about with our heads, it can't be February already?!

We hit the road again, and had a look around Palmerston North City Centre for about an hour, long enough to get some lunch. We then headed on south along the kapiti coast road and after driving through several places, we stopped at Paekakariki Holiday Park for a night.

I don't mean to make this into a whinge-blog, but it's such a shame when campsites are allowed to go down hill like this one has. It's in a really nice location, right near the beach, and set in established bush-land, and there's a train station just up the road to catch frequent trains into Wellington. It could be really nice. But the whole campsite is in desperate need of TLC.

The woman on reception couldn't give monkeys who's in which site and when we asked if there are any shady sites she just shrugged, 'computer says no'. And the toilet/shower block was a major disaster area - dirty, no soap in the (broken) dispenser, nothing to dry your hands with. I felt like starting a petition in the ladies shower block, 'sign this if you agree this place needs a damned good clean'. I'm not particularly bothered about if an ablutions block is old, just as long as it's maintained and clean, otherwise we might as well free-camp or stay on a Dept of Conservation site with just a cold tap and a toilet.

And yet the campsite was packed full of campers. Nowhere else decent to go perhaps? They need some healthy competition. Perhaps we'll come back and set up a campsite next door. In the interests of their business development, we could have given them 'valuable customer feedback' but instead we just voted with our feet and left early morning, without showering.



We hadn't realised just how near to Wellington we were. We soon arrived at the Windy City, and found the Lower Hutt Top 10 campsite just north of Wellington Harbor. This campsite seems to be a major drop-off 'depot' for rental camper vans, and essentially a base from which to venture into Wellington and a 'stop-over' place before catching the ferry.

We had a good mooch around Windy Wellington yesterday and today, around the shops and the Te Papa museum on the waterfront. We’re ready to ‘cross over’ now, and commune with those who’ve passed over to the other side. Our ferry sails from Wellington tomorrow at noon; South Island here we come!

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Photos

Ferry, Helicopter or Kayak?
...I know which one I'm catching to get to the South Island!

Red Jelly
'Okay, we'll go and see the helicopters in the harbor, again...'