On December 25th, our destination was Wellington. It was a bit of a transportation day, since the primary target was making sure that we would be somewhere near the Interislander – the ferry to the South Island – on the next morning.

We didn’t go to bed early on Christmas Eve, and we were all a bit tired as we passed the multiple wineries south of Napier. We didn’t think much about the fact, that we would be on the road on Christmas Day, and at first it seemed ideal with all the more or less empty roads. Later it didn’t seem such a great advantage, when we navigated to at least three gas stations – that turned out to be closed. We did eventually find one, though, that could provide us with diesel as well as ice creams.

Even though we mostly wanted to reach our designated freedom camp in Wellington, we added a stop at yet a beautiful beach, part of the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington.

Everyone needed the break from driving, and the beach just accented how much New Zealand has to offer – we realise that for every choice we have made for our route, there are a million more things to do and much more time which could have been spent in the area. Positive problems, I know.

We arrived at the freedom camp in the afternoon – a beautiful spot in Owhiri Bay, just South of Wellington. Actually just a small parking lot, but the view of the ocean, and the surrounding cliffs and hills was amazing. The place was supposed to be rather windy, but we were lucky, and the afternoon we spent there was very calm.

There were many great hikes to do around the camp, but we just went for a good long walk along the coast, before we returned to Børge BumleBus to have dinner and play Bezzerwizzer with a view to the sunset.

Not the worst way to spend our last evening on the North Island.