We were pretty sleepy still when we woke up, I don't know whether that's because we had all been drugged in our sleep by the smell of cannabis or because we had yet another early start! But by 9am, we were on the road again and headed for Picton. Seagull stopped at 2 seal colonies for us to get some photographs: a group of adults on some rocks in the sea and the youngsters at the top of the waterfall Pinky had taken us to last time we travelled this route! Even though we had done this before it was still fun to see all the seal pups again. 
 
It was very strange arriving in Picton as that was where the Stray family had been formed so it brought back lots of lovely memories from the start of our trip! A lot of people hopped off here as they were just beginning their travels so, while Seagull was getting them sorted, Matt, Nienke and I popped to the supermarket to stock up on supplies for the ferry crossing . We were booked on the 2pm crossing but as the ferry coming from Wellington to Picton was delayed due to the weather, we were warned we would probably be delayed setting off, be in for a fairly rough crossing and arrive pretty late! This was not what Matt wanted to hear as he does tend to suffer with sea sickness and was already dreading a smooth crossing, let alone a rocky one, so he dosed up on the travel sickness tablets in preparation! As it turned out, the swell had actually dropped considerably but he time we set off so it wasn't too bad a journey and we were only about an hour late arriving in to Wellington. One positive of this was it gave us the opportunity to get to know some of our new Stray buddies a little better, including Tom from Weston Super Mare, Una from Ireland, Jenny from England and Steffen from Germany. Between napping, eating and having some very silly conversations indeed (including debating how much money would need to be on offer for each of us to jump off the ferry in the dark into the cold water!!!! Jenny seemed to think a million was a suitable amount until Matt said he'd do it for 10 grand, then Tom said he would probably do it for free just because it would be fun!!) the journey actually went pretty quickly and we were soon disembarking the boat and climbing on to our new bus to take us to our hostel .
 
Once we had all checked in and grabbed the last servings of the free meal, our new group (including Shannon who had arrived earlier in the day!) ventured out into Wellington centre to find somewhere to have a few drinks. We were slightly duped by the first bar: from the outside Daddy O's looks like a fairly standard bar with a 'Happy Hour' sign and price list and an advert for live music. When we got inside, however, we discovered we were in a pretty swanky bar/restaurant, happy hour had finished a couple of hours ago and the real prices were pretty steep! To top that off, the only other group in there left pretty sharpish so we were left with a rather intense guitarist playing a private gig! It was all very awkward as he kept trying to talk to us but we didn't really know what he was talking about, we were very keen to get away, especially as he tried singing "hallelujah" for us as we broke for the door! We knew as soon as we walked up to the next bar that it was much more our kind of place: they handed us free drinks vouchers! Here, Nienke & I could get 3 cocktails for the price of the one we had in the last bar and the music was brilliant! Seagull came to meet us for a couple of drinks before doing his usual trick of sloping off without saying goodbye! When it got to about 22:30, we decided to head back to the bar next to our hostel: Blend, and have a few more drinks there! It was there that the night turned from a few civil drinks to a messy night of crazy table top dancing!!!! There had been a private fancy dress party in the bar earlier so there was a lot of accessories laying around for us to play with, in particular a box of surgical gloves which the boys found hilarious to try and blow up or stick on their heads!!! For some unknown reason, Jenny decided to blow one up and stick it on her head then dance about the place as if it actually looked cool, it was all very strange . We had taught everyone Roman's dance routine so when the time was right we all broke out into a group dance; it never fails to amuse us all. Without even a thought, we danced the night away and it was soon about 1:30am, when the decision was made that we probably should head to bed as Nienke, Tom & Steffen had to be on the bus at 6:40!!!!! But not before a quick trip to Burger King to soak up some of the alcohol! I was so grateful for this decision in the morning! Although we had left the bar, the night was far from over it seemed as the fun and silliness continued during our visit to Burger King and then back in the room, with stupid immature conversations and Nienke trying to teach us rude Dutch sentences, it was hilarious! Unbelievably, it was nearly 3am by the time we actually went to sleep!
 
At 6:15am we were woken up by Nienke shouting, "Get up, get up!" to Tom as either they had slept through their alarms or they hadn't gone off and they only had 25 minutes before the bus left!!! With some very bleary eyes we said very rushed farewells but we knew we would see them again in Auckland in a few days anyway! Matt and I promptly fell back asleep and got a few extra, much needed, hours in!!
 
We spent the next couple of days packing in as much as possible as there's an awful lot to see in Wellington and 2 days isn't really long enough! 
 
Wellington is New Zealand's third largest city and is named after Britain's first Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), who is also responsible for Wellington boots being called such as he made them fashionable! It has been the capital and home of the New Zealand Government since 1865; the original capital was further north in Russell, then moved to Auckland before moving even further south to keep the south islanders happy .
 
It is known as the 'Windy City', with its local rugby team going by the name of 'The Hurricanes'. Wind is channeled through the Cook Strait, which is the only gap in New Zealand's 1400km chain of mountains. This isn't Wellington's only battle with nature though: the city is located on a major fault line and the harbour is a large volcanic crater! They say that they're waiting for a huge earthquake almost any day as scientists seem to think that they're overdue one by about 6 years. It was almost a shock to them when Christchurch got hit instead of here. 
 
Even though it's the capital its only got a population of about 300,000 so it's easy to walk about most of it. The first place on our agenda was the Cable Car. This opened in 1902 to link the hill suburbs with the city. The cars used on the route have been electrically powered since 1933. This was a handy way to get up the hill and it gave us a brilliant view back over the city and the harbour. At the top we wandered through the Botanic Gardens and popped into the Carter Observatory, which had some very interesting displays about how the Earth was formed and its place in the solar system . After taking the cable car back down to the city, we walked to the rugby stadium so Matt could get a picture before having a wander around the harbour, where there are some very intriguing art sculptures. It's a lovely harbour area to walk around as it has such a mixture of industrial terminals, passenger ferries, bar areas, city buildings then beautiful housing areas on the side of lovely green hills, all looking right out to sea. 
 
Wellington is home to 'Te Papa', New Zealand's National Museum, which houses many exhibits detailing New Zealand's precarious position on the tectonic plates, it's birds and marine life, cultural history, a contemporary designed Marea, and copies of the Treaty of Waitangi. We particularly enjoyed the 'Awesome Forces' exhibit which includes an Earthquake House, simulating the 1987 Edgecumbe earthquake and teaches you all about the problems they have with constant earthquakes. In the 'Mountains to Sea' exhibit there is the preserved body of the largest ever recorded squid! It's massive to say the least, its eyeballs are the size of footballs, it looks rather alien like persevered in its tank . The museum itself is huge so we had to visit it in two shifts! During the first visit we concentrated on level 2, leaving levels 3 & 4 to our second visit! Each visit ended up being just over 2 hours which was enough before we got tired and needed a break.
 
The Wellington area is also home of Peter Jackson and his Weta Studios of Lord of the Rings, King Kong, district 9 and The Hobbit fame, it turned out they have been involved in many many more films as well but these were the most high profile ones. We caught a bus to the Weta Cave, a place which confused Matt greatly as it wasn't actually a cave as he was expecting, instead it is a souvenir shop with a mini museum attached! He thought it was actually going to be a cave that they filmed the scenes in. He he! We had a look around, took some photos and watched a short explanatory DVD before deciding to go on the Window into Workshop tour. This was a really interesting tour as you were taken behind the scenes by one of the team to see how many of the props and costumes are made for multi million pound films! We even got to touch some of them and he revealed some of the secrets behind them, for example, how lightweight the chain mail armour is because the links are actually made from plastic! Matt was quite excited as it turned out it was this company that made the short films for the Halo computer games, so there was all the life size guns and a fully working jeep with a big turret gun on the top . They all looked exactly like the ones in the games (apparently?!). It turns out the film Matt had heard was being made actually got put on hold but Steven Spielberg is now hoping to continue it, so he was very pleased. We both loved it and it really makes you see things differently, even if I haven't seen half the films the guide was talking about!!
 
We didn't get to meet our new room mates until their second night as we were already asleep when they came home on the first night. All we knew was they were 2 lads who liked a party! So it was nice to actually speak to them and discover they were Mike & James from America. They were planning another big night out so had decided to beat the cost by having some pre drinks in the room, by some I mean an entire bottle of rum! They invited us to join them but with a 6am start we resisted the temptation, although it would have been so much fun! It was hilarious watching them steadily become more and more drunk and see their personalities come through! It turned out James was the crazy party animal who didn't really seem to have a care in the world whereas Mike was a bit more sensible and had to keep reigning James in! I have no clue how these two are friends as they are so different but together they make a very entertaining double act! They even taught us some new drinking games, including one based on rock, paper, scissors which is great fun! We were actually pretty disappointed when they decided to head out into town as we had been having such a laugh but we would never have made our bus if we hadn't used that time to get packed and head to bed as it would have been a really heavy night. We then went to sleep just waiting for them to come crashing back in during the night but they were pretty good actually so we snuck out in the morning without disturbing them either. It was just such a shame we hadn't had more time with them as they really were funny guys. 
 
There was plenty to see and do in Wellington and there's a cool vibe about it, with an area dedicated to alternative clothing and skateboarding shops, I can see how people like it here but it was very busy and you couldn't really relax as people were hustling and bustling around you, so like most cities we were ready to move on and get back to the remoteness of the beautiful New Zealand landscape.