Wellington – New Zealand 23rd January to 25th January

After Taupo was our final stop of the north island – Wellington. Unfortunately to get there meant another 5 hour drive. Due to the lack of hostel availability we opted to stay in an Air BnB for a change, a private room in Dale’s home. When we arrived we were greeted by a cheerful middle age women, and her cat and dog (later introduced as Crystal and Frankie). As it was getting late we just stayed in and cooked that night. After being woken up by Dale’s chickens, she had put out a selection of breakfast food which was a pleasant change from the breakfasts we had been having in hostels. We then headed into Wellington town straight to the Te Papa museum which many people had recommended we go to. The museum has various exhibits which they rotate, mostly relating to New Zealand but not all, whilst we were there they had a very large exhibit on the Gallipoli campaign in World War 1. Having no expectations of what we would see in the museum, and certainly very little knowledge about the Gallipoli, we were both blown away by the exhibit. The amount of detail and technology used was extraordinary: 3D videos, interactive stations, anecdotes and real pieces such as weapons and tools. However the show stopper was the various dark rooms, each with a narrative of an individual round the wall being read out on the speaker, and giant lifelike statues in the middle of the room. These statues were like nothing I had seen before, the amount of detail gone into these was incredible! I looked it up and they all took 24,000 hours to make, I could see why as you could see hairs on the arms/hands and sweat dripping from the heads. Once we left the museum we finally experienced Wellington’s nickname of “Windy Welly” as we were nearly blown away walking around. The next morning we said goodbye to Dale and headed to the ferry to start our trip to the South Island.