On Sunday we left the heady delights of Turangi and headed for the desert road. We climbed steadily for quite a long time and reached the Desert Road after about an hour. The name, Desert Road is a misnomer there is no desert but there is a vast expanse of rough country with low shrub, which was reminiscent  of lowland Scotland. The great surprise was to see two huge mountains covered with snow. These were in fact active volcanoes and they dominated the landscape for miles.  The photo opportunities were far too good for the expiation photographer to ignore.
The "desert" is in fact the training ground for the NZ army and there were numerous signs warning the unwary traveller not to venture too far from the road. It was no surprise then to find the National Army museum at the end of the road and we had a pleasant two hour trip around that discovering the history of the NZ army. There was a very good exhibition on Gallipoli which was well worth the time.
Lunch was taken in a small cafe before we pushed on to Petome, just outside of Wellington. We found our motel and settled in. The drive into Wellington was actually quite boring and very busy as we got involved in roadworks and huge queues of traffic, one pleasant part was a cross a pass which then developed into a riviera style drive along the sea front around several winding bends.
Petome was and is a suburb of Wellington and was celebrating its annual history month so once we had settled we walked up and down the Main Street  looking for a restaurant. We choose a pub in the end and all of us had fish and chips.
The pub itself was quite empty and we had to ask mine host if he would mind turning the music down ten or fifteen decibels, once this had been achieved I was able to take clear instructions from the tour manager again.
What strikes me about today is that in parts the North Island is just as beautiful as the South Island and all of NZ is worth seeing , certainly the desert road was a piece of interesting landscape.