Crossing the Cook Strait

After a good night’s sleep we had brek and headed off to Wellington, with some pit stops on the way. Alex managed to get his hair cut at last! It was getting nearly as long as mine. We were soon descending into Wellington and we both were craving fish and chips so lunch was the first stop! The shop we chose had a newspaper article saying that the cast members of LOTR, notably Strider, loved this fish and chippy so we felt we had chosen wisely. And we had. It was lush. During the past couple of months we had managed to get a really annoying mark on Alex’s camera sensor so we also decided it was time to fix it. We dropped it off to be cleaned and headed up to Mount Victoria lookout where we could see Wellington and further afield. Although a bit cloudy it was still a good view and Alex enjoyed watching the planes taking off from the nearby airport – such a geek!

We had chosen a campsite just outside of town so that we didn’t have far to come to the ferry in the morning. We made a quick pit stop at a sports shop as my trainers have too many holes in but alas I didn’t find any. My trusty pair will have to keep going. We checked into the enormous campground and sorted our stuff out for the early start the next morning. The ducks seemed to take a liking to us as they kept waddling over to our kit. Alex eventually had enough of them and started chasing them around the camp to leave us alone. An amusing sight for all.

The next morning we left extra early as the previous day the traffic had been very bad on the road to/from the ferry into Wellington. Alas. We didn’t leave early enough as we were stuck in awful traffic. With google maps eta getting nearer to our ferry departure I was having a meltdown worrying that we were going to miss it. I don’t do well when we are late for things. Alex just laughs at me when I get in a panic which makes me even more stressed so it wasn’t the best of starts to the day. Still. We made it. Phew.

The ferry took 3.5 hours across the Cook Strait. It’s a brilliant crossing among peninsulas. Our first stop in the South Island was Abel Tasman National Park and the first road we drove along was Queen Charlotte Drive. Very apt! We passed an older lady who was hitchhiking. We did a u-turn as with a bit of bag shuffling we could fit her in. She didn’t stop talking for the 30 minute journey but she was very interesting. She lived in the north island and was looking at buying a shed in the south. We had absolutely no idea why she was doing that and she didn’t expand on it. After we dropped her off we stopped off for some lunch by the river. We were tempted to jump in but we needed to press on to the campsite. We arrived at the campground at 6pm so after a speedy tent put-up it was time for a glass of red to cheers to the adventures the South Island would bring.