After Taupo we headed to River Valley for a one night stop over, it was in the middle of nowhere! Had to park the bus at the top of a hill and walk to the bottom. Quite a nicely located hostel though right on the river, was pretty simple and cabin like but that didn't really matter as it was only one night. Had a nice roast dinner there for not too much (it's been so long!!!) and then a few drinks after and got talking to quite a few people.

Next day we went to Wellington, it's pretty good because the bus stops off along the way at places worth seeing and tells you a bit about them (usually you get on the bus and then 10 minutes later, just as your falling asleep, it's time to get off and go for a walk!). Got to Wellington quite late in the evening and were pretty shattered, so we just went to find food then went to bed!!! The next day we decided to do the cultural thing and go to the museum, we had planned to do a Lord of the Rings tour (well me and Ben had as Tom didn't want to and Steve is still feeling pretty rough!) but the earliest one was at 10am, so we booked another one for the next day. So we went to Te Papa museum, which was really good. I'd say Auckland Museum was better, Te Papa was quite interactive but seemed more for little kids as opposed to us! So it was another quiet night after then, but found a used book shop and bought Angels and Demons, definitely reccommend that to anyone, better than The Davinci Code! Anyway, can't really afford a night out in Wellington and to be fair, none of us really felt like it. The next day we went for a wonder around Wellington in the morning, it's a really nice city, much nicer than Auckland! Right on the harbour and everything which is nice. Then Ben and I got picked up at 1.30pm for the Lord of the Rings tour. Complete geeks I know but a lot of the good parts were shot in Wellington, and it gave us a chance to go up Mt. Victoria. So that took most the afternoon, up to about 5-6pm, it was good as well as it was a small mini bus with only one other person on there, nice American girl, and our tour guide who was really nice as well. She knew LOADS about the film, how they did stuff and things that happened on set. We went to places the hobbits were filmed and big castles, got some good views of the harbour as well. Shame that the sets were all taken down by New Line Cinema as they didn't want anyone else making money from the films, but you could still see places where stuff was shot and we had pictures to compare them to. Loads of people in Wellington were involved in the film, even our driver! She voiced some of the orcs!