Capital

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Since I had hiked about 16 miles in two days, I took a slower leisurely way down to Wellington. I drove from Taupo to the west coast of the north island and hit nearly every beach along state highway 1. The beaches are about 5km from the highway, and are all technically connected, but they have different names. You can drive along all of them and not go down highway 1, if you have the correct car and are certified to drive on beaches. There are also numerous Tsunami warnings along these beaches as well.

At the end of the day I stopped at Kaitoke park so I could see some rainforest. I didn't realize that this was where the scenes for Rivendell were filmed during the Lord of the Rings until turned towards the park and a sign read rivendell. The sets are no longer there, but the park proudly sells that the film was there. I camped for the night in the park for my final night of sleeping in a tiny car.

The next day I went down the Wellington, the capital. Wellington fortuitously sits on basically 3 faults, one of which runs right through the city. It's also very very windy all the time. This is from the Cook Strait. After dropping my stuff off, I wandered around the downtown area for a while, before I hiked up Mt. Victoria. The whole area is a park, and you can drive it, but there are about 5 trails to the top. Many people run this or MTB it. You can get really good views of the city, but you also get a full experience of the wind. They also had to raise a lot of the land around the harbors as well, so, basically Wellington is a major incident waiting to happen.

The next day I got up early and took the Ferry to Picton. This is a standard route that nearly everyone takes to get the South Island. The boat is abosolutley massive, 10 decks, and ferries people, cars, goods, anything that needs to get the south island. The ocean was very very rough through the cook straight, and I had to stand in the middle of the boat so as not to puke. Eventually as we reached the south island, everything calmed down and some really pretty scenery was seen as we made port in Picton.

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