Edd's Travels: Wellington, New Zealand

Kiwis must be big on psychoanalysis. Everybody here calls me 'id'.

All of my readers, even those to whom I haven’t spoken recently, will be aware by now that this journey is another round-the-world; indeed it’s my third RTW in seven years. I think what I like most about RTW trips is the fact that there’s no return journey. You never have to turn back.

I've visited New Zealand before, on my first RTW trip, but that time I missed out on everything in the North Island south of Auckland. So now I'm setting that to rights, with the help of another rental car (see pic below). Oh God oh God oh sweet lord Jesus how I miss that Chevy V8. Excuse me. Anyway, I drove east from Auckland, around the Coromandel Peninsula, and south-west to an AirBnB in Hamilton. There I went out for a 7.30am pub visit with my AirBnB host to watch the French rugby team get turned into filet mignon by the All Blacks. I'm not usually a fan of rugby - in fact, with the possible exception of the 2003 World Cup Final, this was the first rugby match I've ever watched from beginning to end - but it's always good to see the French take a pasting.

Then south again, to the Waitomo Caves. These have been formed over the past 30 million years but were only explored properly in 1887. (New Zealand contained no humans at all until the Maoris arrived from Polynesia, some time between 1250 and 1300 AD). If you like stalactites, stalagmites and glow-worms, then it's the place to be. I was in a group with about two dozen camera-laden Japanese tourists, and they were stunned into silence - you could almost hear their hearts sink - when the tour guide announced that there was no photography permitted in the caves. Not just no flash photography, but no photos at all. Asking a Japanese tourist not to take photos is like asking a fish not to swim. For the rest of the 45-minute cave tour they were like lost souls in the underworld, eyes glazed and staring, camera fingers twitching at thin air whilst their Canons and Nikons dangled uselessly by their sides.

After emerging from the caves I cruised down the west coast to another AirBnB in Whanganui, and then had a day trip all the way south to Wellington, which is pretty nice. It's funny, New Zealand is about as far from home physically as an English person can get, and yet it feels more like England than any other foreign country in the world. Until, of course, the locals open their mouths. 'Plinty of prissure on the Frinch', someone said to me during the rugby. 'Yis,' I replied, trying to fit in, as always.