I took the ferry across the Cook Straits to the North Island, through fog and clouds of jellyfish. I had gone out the night before with Rod (whose dream was to design a ground-breaking mini-gold course with lots of moving parts and contraptions, to be called... 'Rodarama') to watch the cricket and rugby in a pub serenaded by a terrible guy playing the guitar. As a result I was feeling a bit sleep-deprived, so I spent most of the trip dozing in a corner. I was given wrong directions when I got to Wellington and ended up hoiking my bags (now consisting of a heavy day pack, backpack, two carrier bags and a handbag) for around half an hour along various roads and almost into a motorway tunnel. I reached my intended hostel and found that the reception was closed for lunch, so I stormed out (pretty cranky by this point and not inclined to hang around until they felt like they could be bothered to receive guests) and headed to a hostel further along the road, which was open at least.

I liked Wellington, but not as much as I had expected. I thought I would be in museum geek heaven, but there weren't as many as I imagined. Nonetheless, I went to the fantastic Maritime Museum, where they had a mind-boggling presentation featuring tiny little hologram people who looked totally real, the City Art Gallery, the Academies, and the famous Te Papa. The latter is a huge museum dedicated to New Zealand nature and culture, and was very well done. I did a tour of the Parliament Building and I also walked around the city and took the cable car up to the Botanic Gardens. I had a look around an old cemetery, which was partly demolished to make way for a motorway. It sounds a bit macabre, but I find graveyards quite interesting, reading the inscriptions and imaging the lives of the people laid to rest there. It seemed like life in early Wellington was pretty tough, with many early deaths and in some families many children were killed by diseases within days of each other. I suppose in a number of ways, it was like some developing countries today. I was thinking this as I read a book recently about Elizabethan London, and the descriptions of the streets - noisy, dirty, with ramshackle buildings and people in rags - made me think of places in India. At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I thought once again of how lucky I am to be living in the First World, able to see the rest as a tourist who can leave.