Full day wine, seals and Palliser lighthouse tour

You will be picked up from your meeting point and whisked out of the city on a fast-moving motorway. While winding through the picturesque Hutt Valley, your guide will point out some of the filming sites of Lord of the Rings, including Helms Deep, Minas Tirith, River Anduin, and in the Kaitoke Regional Park we will stop to see Rivendell and experience the swing bridge and loop track.

A twenty-minute drive over the Remutaka Mountain Range will bring us into the tranquillity of the Wairarapa region. Ten more minutes of travelling and we arrive in the award -winning wine region of Martinborough. While small in terms of total wine production, Wairarapa's boutique wineries have big international reputations for the quality of their Pinot Noir wines, which is a notoriously difficult wine to make well.

We will visit two of our favourite wineries and listen to the wine makers explaining with passion the history of their wines and inviting you to taste a variety of them.

Your wine tasting will be matched with a delightful gourmet lunch platter that will leave your taste buds tingling. (Lunch cost not included in tour price)

After lunch we head off to Cape Palliser, home of the North Island's largest seal colony. On the way we pass through the quaint fishing village of Ngawi where you will see tractor upon tractor used by the fishermen to haul their boats into the sea.

Shortly after, you will come upon a fur seal colony of mothers with their pups (breeding season is from Mid-November through to mid-January, although the adult female seals are there all year round).Photographers are advised to get no closer than 5 metres from the seals for their own safety.

Exhilarated after the seal experience, you will visit the Cape Palliser Lighthouse and if you are feeling fit, climb up its 254 steps to see unbelievably breathtaking views of the rugged southern coast.

We begin the return trip, grabbing a coffee or ice cream at Ngawi's caravan shop on our way back to Wellington city, finishing the tour at around 4.30pm.