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We drove to Picton on the Northern tip of the South Island to catch our ferry over to the North Island, with our hitchhiker in tow, James the Canadian. The ferry took a 3 hour scenic trip over to Wellington. When we arrived we dropped James off at his hostel in the city centre...just as we were on our way to find our holiday park there was an almighty....CRASH!!! Laura took a disliking to a Mini Cooper and decided to take the wheel arch off! Ooops! We left our details for the driver and headed on our way - quite happy that we had managed to put our additional insurance to use - not a waste of money after all!
That night we decided to head into town to watch a film, The Ringer, which was possibly THE worst film we've ever seen! We don't recommend that you bother with it! The next day we went to the Te Papa museum, which was BRILLIANT (and free)! We saw the Awesome Forces exhibit, which shows the power of geological forces and it included an earthquake house that we got to stand in! The Mountains to Sea exhibit was about the animals and plants of NZ. Then we tried Blastback, a simulated ride where you go back in time 65 million years - we were the only ones on the ride which was quite funny! There was also a Marae, Maori meeting place and the Man Whenua showed different aspects of Maori life. Then, the piece de la resistence, The Lord of the Rings exhibit, which was obviously about the film, but had loads of artifacts and costumes from the movies and interviews and documenteries from the cast and crew, behind the scenes! It was really good and made us want to watch the films again, especially now we know the little tricks they used!! After the museum we went on the cable car, which is one of the only few remaining in the world, of its type! Which had a good view over the city and the Botanical Gardens were at the top.
We then visited the Beehive and Parliament buildings. At tea time we walked down to Oriental Bay for Fish and Chips - which were nice but not as good as home, no mushy peas in sight! Tut tut! We then went back to Te Papa to finish what we started!!
The following day we headed to Tongariro National Park, which is where much of the Lord of the Rings was filmed. We went with the intention of doing the Tongariro Crossing, which is claimed to be the best walk in NZ, and takes around 8 hours....but the weather meant that the Crossing was shut, as the snow was a lot lower for the time of the year, which meant we weren't able to do the walk. So we stayed the night and headed on to Lake Taupo the following day.
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