So, as expected, it was just the two of us plus Josh our driver on the Kiwi bus leaving Taupo. We stopped off in Whakapapa National Park for a lovely 2 hour walk, just the 3 of us in the sunshine with great views of 'Mount Doom' from Lord of the Rings and the ski fields. We then picked up 3 more Dutch girls (woo!) and made the joint decision to skip River Valley and head straight to the capital city, Wellington.

Tired from the long journey we had a quiet Thursday night and then headed out to explore the next day. We went to the Te Papa museum which was really good (the highlight being a huge chocolate brownie). We saw a giant dead squid, a whale skeleton and went in an earthquake simulator. We then headed to the cable car - which Lucy expertly directed us to using a map (hope your proud dad!) - which took us up to the Botanical gardens which were really pretty even though we dont know what botancial gardens are. But then, the inevitable happened, and we got stupidly lost on the other side of Wellington! We rewarded ourselves for finding the way back with a Dominos, they're 2.50 for a large pizza over here so we cant say no.

That night, we had a few drinks in our room (rebels - alcohol is banned in all hostels!) before we hit the town. Our first bar was full of sophisticated, middle aged people and so we obviously didn't fit in. We wandered up and down the main street until we eventually asked a couple of girls where we should go. Instead of telling us where to go, they took us under their wing and took us to one of the clubs, buying us all $10 shots each (result!). We went to a couple more bars with them, with them continuing to buy our drinks, before we called it a night as we had to catch the ferry to the south island at 7am the next morning.

Hungover and tired, we dragged our suitcases onto the 3 hour long ferry and spent most of the journey eating leftover Domino's pizza (classy birds!). When we arrived, we met a new, cute Kiwi van instead of a bus because there was now only 8 of us - 3 Irish, 1 Netherlands, 1 Danish and 1 Singapore, our new family :) We drove through the Marlborough sounds, where there are hundreds of vineyards and even did some wine tasting before we continued along the west coast to Kaiteriteri.

We were not impressed by Kaiteriteri. There was a beautiful golden beach but we arrived when it was almost dark and all 8 of us were crammed into one dorm room. No one was impressed with our huge suitcases taking up the whole bedroom! We climbed up a hill to watch the sunset and then we had the highlight of our night... steak! We prepared the steak and potatoes ourselves and it was definitely our best meal yet, much better than jacket potato/pasta/cheese sandwiches. We went to the pub to watch the rugby then had another early night after a long day travelling.

In the morning we travelled to Westport. Lucy dropped a pen down the side of her seat, and in trying to retrieve the pen, managed to get her hand stuck down the side. After struggling with no one noticing she told Jess, who was most unhelpful and just laughed hysterically. Eventually, with the help of some vaseline, the van being stopped and the help of Simone, the hand was out but Lucy couldn't feel her hand for 20 minutes afterwards - silly girl. This was our best hostel yet, complete with a huge video (not DVD) collection so we were in for a great night. First we stocked up on marshmellows and chocolate and headed to the beach with the others for a camp fire and to watch the sunset. We lived up to our girly reputation, buying 'Passion Pop' fizzy wine to drink. When we got back we had a movie marathon of Along Came Polly, Enough and Step Mom. Step Mom had Jess in tears (again!).

The next morning we went on a coastal walk to see a seal colony which were really cute but too far away to get a decent picture. Then we headed to the 'Pancake rocks' which looked absolutely nothing like pancakes but the blowholes, with the huge waves, were really impressive even though we got pretty wet. Then we stopped in the town of Greymouth to purchase our fancy dress for the famous 'Poo pub' near Lake Mahinapua that night. We had previously mentioned how good we were at fancy dress so felt very pressured to live up to expectations - which of course we did... We decided on pirates complete with our own pirate ship. So after carrying huge boxes around town and struggling to find eye patches in the fancy dress shop, we were ready to go.

We spent the next two hours constructing the perfect pirate ship and taking over the whole hostel room (again!). We even had to give one of the guys an incredibles outfit which was a tight squeeze but he managed to get in! After a huge BBQ, cooked by Les, the hostel owner, the oldest pubilican in New Zealand at 87 years of age, we went to the bar. The drinking games began... So much fun and everyone was very drunk. Obviously, we won the fancy dress prize - A FREE TANDEM CANYON SWING worth $199 which we are going to do when we get down to Queenstown.

With everyone feeling a little delicate in the morning we went to the weirdest 'museum' ever called Bushman Pete's. We were shown a video of men jumping out of helicopters to catch deer and then the dead deer strung up hanging beneath the helicopter - very odd. The museum was full of dead and alive possums with strange, offensive signs around the place. The complaints letters were hilarious and Bushman Pete's responses were even more funny.

Next stop, Franz Josef for 2 nights so we will update you soon. We're very sad that we're now into our last two weeks of travelling!

J&L x