Spent another night at Catch Valley DOC campsite listening to the heavy rain and lying awake wondering if the van would lift off and we'd wake up in Oz. Good thing for us our little van boxed well against the wind and we were still standing (on 4 wheels) as daylight came the wind let up but the rain would not stop, we made coffee and ate a quick breakfast and prepared, in the mud, to head into Wellington for errands and to have a look around the city. After several figure 8's and faulty kiwi senior citizen directions we found the train station and headed downtown. When we arrived it was raining and windy and we found a nice cafe in the train station with wifi and outlets. We ordered tea and hot chocolate and plugged in every electronic item we own to charge while surfing the net, it was nice to catch up and , with cords and electronics everywhere recharge all our batteries!
Finally the weather cleared and we went out to explore the city. Down town is right on a harbor on the edge of Cook Straight, the city is very compact with unique architecture, all the buildings seemed to have character…much cooler feel than Auckland. We roamed for a little while then found our sports store to buy stove fuel and Paul battled with himself over whether or not to but a pair of extremely over priced but totally bad ass Varnet sunglasses. In the end his logical side won which was good because we ended up forking over several hundred dollars later just to buy milage for our diesel van(tax is not included in pump price with diesel, you buy it by the Km) and to renew our registration, it was quite a shock to both of us. It is funny how one day we feel like we are doing so good and we can splurge a little and the next hour we have some big bill and and we start stressing about how much we are spending with nothing coming in, the joys of unemployment.
After a really cool afternoon in Wellington we caught the train back to our car and went to find a campsite for the night, DOC locked the gates until 8am so we would have to find somewhere else cause we had to be at the ferry at 7am. We found a Top 10 holiday park, pricey but with free showers and lots of hot water, both of us took 20 minute showers, it was SO NICE! After cleaning up we made dinner then tried to watch some tv but got kicked out by a british tour group with a minim age requirement of 70 having a planning meeting as to which motor camps to drive to next. The leaders of the group (husband wife combo)sported matching outfits! We promised each other to never match like that in public, we then put on our long sleeve Ibex shirts and down vests different colors though, went outside and decided the large rubber dome filled with air that was like a trampoline was calling our name. We both got on and were giddy jumping with Paul doing tweaked out methods and ski tricks and Shabree completing 10 point toe touches and other misc dance moves. It was so much fun but right as we tried to take some pictures the dome started being less bouncy and we noticed it was loosing air. We quickly made an exit back to the camp site and never looked that way again for the rest of the night.
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