13TH - 17TH MAY

We had parked up in a parking space on some random street in Wellington after we had got off the ferry, we’d seen a few other campervans so guessed it would be OK. Due to our location we woke up early and as we opened the curtains we were fairly surprised at how bad the weather actually was. It was a proper stinking day with gusty windy and lots of what seemed like extra cold rain. We headed for a café and had a coffee whilst we waited for the Te-Papa museum to open. We had decided on our last visit to Wellington to leave the Maori section of the museum to when we visited again. Although we needed to get back to Auckland by Monday evening we figured that we could allow a few hours on Sunday morning to check out the rest of the museum.

The museum was again fabulous, the Maori exhibitions were incredible and again we got that guilty British feeling! We could have

spent a lot longer in the museum but we knew we would need to get cracking with the start of our drive back up to Auckland. We could have managed it in one day if we really needed to, but thought we’d break up the journey and stay over half way up the North Island. We headed off around lunch time and although it wasn’t that many kilometres it did take an awful long time to get where we wanted to go. The weather didn’t help, it was atrocious! The wind was buffeting Bongo all over the place and the rain was unbelievable - fast speed wipers and I still couldn’t see a thing! Needless to say it took longer than expected and my arms were aching from wrestling Bongo around in the wind! We also had to go over the highest pass in the North Island, Desert Road, just before Tarangi where we stayed. What a battle with the elements this was, it was honestly some of the worst driving conditions I have ever experienced but we took it easy and got there safe and sound. The Desert Road usually had spectacular views of