NZ Day 7 – Booted it down to Wellington

We drove all the way down to Wellington via a place called Tai Hapi, the gumboot throwing capital of NZ under the advice of the Brass owner. Before reaching this place, we'd read about a giant carrot statue in a place called Ohakune in the Lonely Planet as pictured. The carrot has something to do with this festival.

Tai Hapi turned out to be slightly disappointing and like a lot of small towns, its identity statue made from corrugated metal – a giant gumboot. More amazing scenery along the way with multiple cows and sheep filling the fields. Stopped at Mangaweka which had a café in an old Dakota plane and stocked up on the lovely NZ chocolate and coffee. Another stop at a place called Bulls which it seemed every business used the town name as cheesily as possible e.g. the medical centre is Cure-a-bull.

We approached Wellington, the country’s capital without a real idea of where to stay and it turned out to be quite stressful finding somewhere which allowed campervans, close enough to the city but not a glorified car park with power. We must have tried about 3 sites which were either too noisy, out of town or too scabby. We drove back up the coast for half an hour and found Paekakariki, a small arty town next to a nice beach. The campsite was owned by the first grumpy Kiwi we’ve met all holiday. After parking up we headed for the beach for some sunset views and walked into town looking for Salt-Tea Towers, a recommended chippy. It took us what seemed hours to get there and couldn’t believe it was shut for one night only. We opted for Finns, a café/restaurant further on for quite decent grub. The owner reminded us of Wally from Crocodile Dundee.