Farm Hand Dan and Wellington

---

There is only so much driving you can do before the natural urge for a few days staying in the same place takes over so with that in mind we ventured south to a place called Upper Hutt, just outside Wellington. Here, friends of ours were house-sitting for a lovely couple on a quite staggeringly beautiful farm complete with sheep, alpacas, cows and chickens. We got our hands a little dirty, whilst still maintaining the elegance any city slicker should.



I fed cows silage, chickens their feed and even collected the odd egg or two. The place even had a hot tub which allowed for some wonderful star gazing, whilst drinking the local red wine. I could have retired this weekend, if only someone would pay me a huge undeserved pension.



We had to arrange our Chinese visas for our imminent departure and this gave us the chance to spend the day in Wellington. I have to say, out of all the cities we have been to on this trip, Wellington is by far my favourite. It is very bustling by NZ standards and also superbly laid out on a beautiful port (the inter-islanders docks here). Within the city limits are very steep hills, atop one of which is a beautiful botanic garden. I recommend any traveller spends an afternoon up here as when the weather is good, it is stunning and provides a wonderful view of central Wellington below.



We spent the late morning/afternoon perched up here wandering amongst the very well kept gardens. After getting the tram back down to the heart of the busy shopping district, we went for lunch in a quite brillient cafe, cleverly disguised one of those boring non-descript places you see EVERYWHERE...it was so bland from the outside I cannot even remember its name! We had a wonderful lunch there with great service (I had hash brown, with black pudding, a poached egg and hollandaise sauce. Bosh!). Thus proving you need to stand at the windows of these places, staring at people eating, just to make sure you don't miss out...



After the previous night of heavy boozing, Jim and Zaidee (our wonderfully kind hosts) cooked us a stunning dinner of potato rosti's, spinach, chorizo and mushroom ragu all topped with a poached egg from the farm...yes it tasted every bit amazing as it sounds, so well done and thank you kindly to those two. The next day we said our tearful farewells (Jim cried, bless him) and picked up our passports with freshly printed visas from Wellington before heading for Tongariro National Park as a stop off before Auckland. It's nearly time to give the camper back see!



Dan

Xx

---