29TH - 1ST MAY

The drive down to Wellington was quite a way but we passed through some lovely scenery so it wasn’t too much of a chore!!! In fact I love driving in New Zealand it is great, so much better than my ex daily drudge down the M56 to Ashley! We had decided to stay just outside Wellington at Porirua and get the train into the capital. The train was only a 20 minute ride and the campsite we found was half the price of the central ones. The campsite was OK, it had two resident donkeys, was on the top of a small hill and located in an industrial estate, which was quite bizarre, but fine as the view in the other direction was of lush forest.. We arrived late afternoon and weren’t really up for heading into Wellington so we just chilled around for the reminder of the day and evening.

The next morning was another fairly chilled affair. We are definitely getting into the New

Zealand way of life, which is really great, it seems a lot less hectic than life in England and it is very enjoyable. People have the time of day for you, even in petrol stations for instance they always greet you with a ‘how are you today’ instead of the usual English grunt. We have met fellow Europeans who have said the same, Europe could certainly learn a few life style lessons from the always ever so cheerful and relaxed kiwis. Anyway what did we get up to - ah yeah, after our super chilled morning we headed off in search of the train station. We passed the resident donkey who was very friendly and made the usual donkey noises and semi rushed over to us and insisted we fed him grass from the other side of the fence! The station was only a 20 minute walk and we only had to wait around 5 minutes for the train so not bad timing really seeing as we didn’t have a clue what times the trains ran.<