Cycle: 6km

After a few hours of sleep we rubbed our eyes and rolled into the Interislander check-in desk! We thought we had made it by the skin of our teeth and indeed, were told by the check-in clerk to go "straight round to board" but when we got to the bit where the bikes board, which turned out to be also where the trains board(!?), there was a small delay so we had to wait and watch loading shenanigans for half an hour. Trains on a boat! Neither of us had ever seen this before. And even more scary, the trains had no driver! A remote controlled train was depositing and collecting many 43000kg containers onto the bowels of the ferry. It was fascinating to watch. Then they started reversing brand new cars at high speeds onto the ship! Eventually we were allowed to walk our bikes on (no riding on allowed as someone had recently fallen off doing this and scraped their nose on the grating), tie them up and climb the many staircases up to the floors where normal people gather.

We had a great ride over to Wellington and I spotted a two Little Blue Penguins swimmming in the Sound and then saw a dark grey fin. I pointed it out to Scott who assured me it was a shark! Cool! We knew to look out for so much wildlife as Becky had told us how much was around last night. This was enough excitement for two tired and slightly hungover people so we went off in search of fried food...(We found out the next day that a pod of twelve orca were playing in Wellington Harbour when our ferry passed through but we weren't close enough to see them - boo.)

As we approached the dock it all looked a bit different to how we remembered and then it came back to us that we had sailed from Wellington in February using the other ferry company whose dock is much closer to the city. Oops. But, it wasn't too bad, there was a cycle path marked sporadically and after a misinterpretation taking us onto a state highway we made it into town unscathed. I really enjoyed cycling past all the big shops and cafes full of people - it was so different from the South Island.

We'd been a bit naughty and after our rubbish camping in a cramped back yard experience last time, coupled with knowing that there were no decent hostels in Welly we booked a cheep deal in the rather fabulous Museum Hotel. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh...

It was all we could do that night to be smug, wear our dressing gowns and watch crap TV. Heaven.