Checking out the glow-worms and Wellington

We forgot to mention our little trip to see some glow-worms on the last blog. What happened was we arrived at a little campsite in Picton. This particular one was nice and clean etc, but with some very rough looking types who lived there! Anyway… there was a big map of the campsite and at the top there was a little path saying ‘to the glow-worms’. I saw Dave’s eyes light up and I knew we would be off to seek them out later on! When dark came we wandered off up the path over broken trees and through thick mud. I was about to say ‘there’s none here and it’s spooky, let’s go back’ (in fact I may have already moaned about this for 10 mins ) when we saw an array of little stars in the mud at the side of the track. We haven’t seen glow-worms before and thought they looked pretty cool. They were tiny white glowing dots – as you would imagine really – but loads of them.

Back to where we left you last time… We arrived at Wellington last Wednesday night and spent Thursday looking around the city. It was a gorgeous sunny day and, having been out in the sticks for so long, we really enjoyed being in a city. As well as being the capital, Wellington is New Zealand’s centre for art and architecture so we went on a little walking tour to see various good looking buildings, including the funny looking Beehive next to Parliament House. The tour ended at the Te Papa museum, so we went in there to take a look around. It’s one of the best museums we have been to. There is a big collection of Maori artwork and sculptures and a lot of information on the history of New Zealand. We had lunch at Macs Brewery overlooking the sea which was nice. Later on in the day we felt the need to go to the cinema, as we haven’t seen a TV or film for ages (it feels like that anyway!). So we went to see Pelham 123, which was quite good.

We have now made it to Tongariro National Park, which is beautiful. Today we had a look at Mt Ngauruhoe (better known as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings). Soon we are doing the Tongariro Crossing, which is 19.4km long and reputedly known as the best day walk in New Zealand. So you will hear about that shortly!