Wellington to Taupo - Flying Ginger

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Wellington & Taupo April 08

We drove our ´happy´ campervan onto the ferry and set off to the North Island. The ferry crossing itself is supposed to have beautiful scenery but unfortunately the weather was still rubbish and all we could see in any direction was white mist. To make matters worse it was the end of the school holidays so the ferry was infested with hundreds of unruly brats running around screaming. We decided to go to the ferry´s cinema to pass the time in relative peace.

Two hours later, we had arrived in Wellington. We really liked Wellington, there was a lively buzz about the city but like the rest of New Zealand it was really clean and pretty, plus it´s next to the sea! We will remember Wellington most probably because of its cinema.By this point due to a combination of getting fed up with the cold van and days of miserable rain we had racked up quite a lot of visits to the cinema, in fact we watched every film that was showing at the time so if anyone needs a recommendation let us know! Wellington also had a quality tram ride upto the botannical gardens which gave great views over the city. Randomly i had some swimming lessons there to ! My front crawl has to be improved ,basically due to being bullied into doing triathlons when i get home by Foster and Morgan ( this is still by no means certain ! )

We left Wellington and travelled up to Taupo, whilst there we went to watch some people bungy jumping. I had been considering doing a jump myself for a while but I wasn´t sure if I could go through with it. I tried to convince Cabbie to do a tandem jump with me but he was having none of it, he has done one before and that was enough apparently. We watched quite a few people jump and it was scary just watching them I couldn´t make my mind up and then someone told me they were only letting one more person jump for the day and then they would be closing. I marched into the office and signed up, the arsey woman behind the counter told me ´I would have to jump straight away, there could be no hesitating as there wasn´t enough time for any of that´I was worried she would just come and push me off if i wasn´t prompt enough! I walked over to the platform " I am so so scared!" I told the guys but they were more interested in getting me off the platform as soon as possible so they could finish work for the day " yeh, you´ll be fine, lets get you attached" they tied my legs and quickly led me to the edge. I had been told prior that it was easiest to not look down but to just look at the horizon. I discovered as I waddled over (feet tied together) that this isn´t really possible, you have to look down so that you can see the edge of the platform! By this point I was thinking that I really didn´t want to jump of a perfectly good ledge and then the guy said 1, 2 ,3 bungy and I jumped! It wasn´t the most graceful jump I have to admit, I didn´t want to just fall off the edge so I bent my legs with the intention of gracefully leaping into the air but I was so scared that my legs didn´t work and I just fell off in a rather unflattering squatting postion, screaming!

It was good though and I was really proud that I had done it, afterwards we went out to celebrate with too many beers. The next day (feeling rough) there was more rain so we decided to drive up to Rotorua

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Photos

Bit of beach
Wellington

Vandals strike
One evening whilst parked outside a hostel some cheeky sods vandalised the 'happy camper´ with toilet roll !

The Impossible Challenge
100 yards, high winds, no wedge..... not even Tiger would get a hole in one here ! Taupo, NZ

Comments

[Hollers]

See,I read this one..
Just to prove i do read these blogs that you put so much effort into,i am replying to you both. In fact so much effort has gone in to them that you're talking about April when we're in July.Sending us all postcards would've kept us up to date more quickly. Technology eh? Hurry up and do your Argentina entry,i can't wait to read about what me and Bro got up to when we were there with you. It all seems so long ago. We're both potless and living on beans on toast. What a life! It's Monday afternoon here,no idea what the pair of you are doing but can we trade places please?It's July,it's raining and i'm broke.Oh and Charlton are dreadful too. Apologies to anyone else reading this, i am a happy chappy normally.XX