Wellington

So the ferry journey from Picton to Wellington was a very pleasant 3 hours indeed, and we arrived spot on time. Ray was waiting at the Wellington ferry terminal for us, and we picked him up and headed straight back to his and Amanda's house in the not-too-far-away-at-all suburbs. We had a great night catching up over another great home-cooked dinner thanks to Amanda, with myself and Ray burning the candle at both ends.

Ray and Amanda were off to Auckland for the weekend the following morning, so after Sarah dropped them to the airport (only 15 minutes away), we had the house to ourselves for the weekend. On the Saturday we packed up Ray and Amanda's bikes in the van, drove down to the coast (it's a vicious climb back up to Ray's house), and spent the glorious afternoon cycling along the lovely coastline and back around to the van via the North of the city.

When Ray and Amanda got back from Auckland on the Monday, Podge had arrived from Ireland for a week's work in the city. I was cooking that night, so I cheekily took it upon myself to invite Podge around to join us, and another late night was had.

Over the two weeks in Wellington that myself and Sarah invaded poor Ray and Amanda's tranquillity we all rotated turns in cooking (Podge taking his turn too, producing a great Mexican banquet). I think we only ate out in Wellington 3 times, and two of those times were when we went to comedy shows. We'd timed our arrival in the city well, as the Wellington Comedy Festival was in full flow. Amazingly we didn't need to book in advance for the shows we saw (imagine that at the Dublin theatre Festival, or the Kilkenny Comedy Festival), and apart from the odd wayward performance I was well impressed with everyone we saw - including two female Maori comedians, both of whom were the best female comedians I've ever seen.

On the days that I did check out the city itself, we had a tour of the parliament in the famous beehive building followed by lunch at the famous backbenchers pub across the road. I also checked out the impressive Te Papa museum twice, the second time meeting Podge in the atmospheric cafe.

But of course, it eventually came time to move on, as we`d spent two and a half months in New Zealand by this stage. We only had another two weeks left on our holiday visas and so we needed to get a move on to see a few of the highlights of the North island (it seems strange writing this that most people`s idea of a complete long holiday, ie. two weeks, could seem incredibily restrictive after you`ve been on the road for a good while). Anyway, our initial plan from Wellington was to make it up to Napier, but of course, true to form for this entire trip, it ended up taking us three days to get there...