After our first few days up in Auckland, Wellington was next on the list, as well as it being the venue for the first South African game of the tournament. It was about an hour's flight down to Wellington, with the airport being beautifully surrounded by mountains, sea and low lying clouds, making for a rather spectacular landing.

Once we were all through, we were picked up by Dave and Kerrie (Si's cousin and wife) who took us all back to their place in Miramar, not that far from the airport. Arriving at their house, we were welcomed with champagne while the rest of their family made their way over. For brunch we headed down to the high street to La Boca Loca, a great little Mexican eatery, fairly popular amongst the locals there apparently.

After brunch, we stopped off next door at the Roxy Cinema and took a walk around. The Roxy had recently gone through a $7million refurbishment under the watchful eye of Peter Jackson, with the interior designed by the Weta Workshop, who had done all the work behind the Lord of the Rings movies. The look and theme of the cinema was very 1930s, and even though we didn't actually catch a movie there, we took a walk around there for sometime, all very impressive, before heading back to Dave and Kerrie's place.

Once home, a mid afternoon nap was definitely in order, and well needed. Later that afternoon Davie and I popped off to the airport and picked up Haig who had flown in from Sydney, so was good to see him again. Once back home and all showered, we grabbed our Bokke jerseys, SA flags, tickets and a beer and headed off down to catch a bus into town.

The first stop was the Wellington Fan Zone, which was fairly quiet with the miserable weather and we were all hoping it wouldn't start to rain much harder. After throwing a few ideas around for dinner, we settled on Mint - an Indian and Malaysian curry house which did a decent dinner, so that sorted us all out before the game. From there we made our way over to the stadium, which was fairly central in town. There were free buses running to the stadium, but the walk itself was fairly easy, with thousands of others out and about also heading to the stadium. So just like in Auckland, it made for a good atmosphere and build up to the game. Plenty of support for the Boks, which is always good to see.

The Wellington Regional stadium, known locally as 'The Cake Tin' due to its shape and silver coloured external walls, has a capacity of 36,000 people. And tonight is was the venue of South Africa vs Wales, our first and fairly big game in our pool. The weather wasn't quite that comforting, with the wind picking up to what felt like gust conditions as well as intermittent rain on our way to the game. But it didn't phase any of us all that much, we had rugby to go and watch! Luckily, by the time the game actually kicked off, it had all cleared up and rain stopped, perfect timing really. The crowd and atmosphere was brilliant inside and outside the stadium, with an incredible South African following and just as much support for Wales, if not more. Everyone who wasn't a Saffa was sporting a Welsh flag I'm sure.

We managed to get off to a good start in the game, with an early try by Frans Steyn, and then converted by Morne Steyn, taking us to a good 7-0 start. After a couple of penalty conversations by Wales and one by us, we went into half time leading 10-6. After the break, Wales kicked a penalty goal, taking our lead to only a single point. Later on, Wales then took the lead by diving over the try line, putting them at 16-10 up, which had South Africa rather nervous. However, in the 65th minute, Francois Hougaard managed a try, which would take us to 17-16 up, the final score of the game. The game was probably a bit too close for our liking but a win's a win. We'll take that.

After the game we headed back into the city centre and onto Foxglove Bar & Kitchen where we settled for the night. I think the unbelievable cold and freezing wind didn't do much for the festivities - all of us barring Woolley started to fade and struggle as the night went on. It could have just been from the jet lag too I suppose. Either way, the evening was good, but it was now clear why Wellington is known as the windy city! Once we managed to convince Si to leave, we found a couple of taxis and cruised home, ready for some sleep.

Then this morning it was yet another stupidly early wake up and start to the day, with our taxi booked for half six. It was just Haig and I this morning, we left the others sleeping while we headed off into central Wellington to the YHA, the pick up point for our bus. After a coffee and a bite to eat, the bus arrived and we started our journey up north towards Rotorua.