Still a day ahead of schedule, when we left Murchison, we headed up to Nelson via Wakefield (specifically, the Bakery at Wakefield – highly recommended if you’re in the area). From Nelson, we drove the incredibly squiggly route to Picton, boarded the Interislander ferry and travelled across to Wellington.

It was a bit of a whirlwind day with not much time for photos. We made one exception, for a lookout near some stunning ocean views. The sign said 500m, and we figured we could use a break from driving after a couple of hours on the road.

Turns out, those 500m were pretty damn vertical, and the views were average at best, half hidden by overhanging trees. Still, we took the photos because we’d trekked the whole way up the damn mini-mountain and we were going to get our lookout photos.

Above: Views from Cullen Point Lookout. In case this blog post is unclear at all, we don’t recommend this one.

… And then we got back in the car and passed a WAY better view point from right next to the road less than a minute later. There was some swearing.

Still, the views along the road were stunning and the drive was… interesting. (Read: Nicole was scared half to death while Kurt navigated the bendy road like a pro.) Screenshot below is of just one section of bendiness as an example. See? We’re not kidding. The road was pure squiggles. Whoever designed it was either drunk or evil.

We reached Picton and headed straight to the ferry terminal. It’s a little hard to find parking for the motorhome in bigger cities, and we only had about an hour spare, so we figured it was safer to just check in… and then wait, and wait, and wait, while they unloaded the previous ferry. Sweet jebus they can load a lot of vehicles onto those things!

We finally boarded (perfectly on time, it just felt like forever after watching the unloading process) and headed up to have some lunch and settle in for the trip. The crossing itself was pretty smooth, but raining on and off, so we didn’t go outside to get photos much. (Also, the outside deck is where all the smokers were… no thanks.)

We arrived safe and sound (and a little seasick, poor Kurt) in Wellington for the first real rain of our trip. We decided to stay in a caravan park that night – there aren’t many options in Wellington for freedom camping, and they’re all carparks in the centre of town (no thanks).

So, Wellington TOP 10 it was, which was nice and clean and actually pretty quiet for being in a city. The next morning, bright and early, we did Weta Workshop (in case you haven’t heard of them, they do all the props, costumes, make up and heaps of other stuff for movies, including Lord of the Rings). So fun! Really cool learning about how all of those things are made, including the use of a CNC machine, which got Kurt’s nerd side into a tizzy.

Onwards and upwards! We left Wellington that afternoon, heading towards our fishing trip to be sure we got there in time. The trip took us along the coast, towards Taupo.

Being us, we took the scenic routes wherever possible and stumbled across a little place called Stormy Point Lookout. So. Freaking. Beautiful.

Above: Stormy Point Lookout.

From there, we kept heading up towards Taupo, passing some stunning(ly cold) mountains along the way to our campsite for the night in Kaimanawa Forest Park.

Above: Yep, all those photos were taking within about an hour of driving. Completely nuts!

Kaimanawa State Forest was meant to just be a campsite for the night, away from the road. It was that, but we also stumbled across a gorgeous river and falls, and took a detour to see them the next morning. More on that in the next blog post though!