Going To New Zealand part six (Wellington on to the South Island)

Hmm.

Morning in Wellington. Getting up to get ready for the new day, I suddenly realised that we had only spent four days in the North Island, and we still had ten days left to go (we had two weeks for the trip). I was still sleepy, and my brother was still sleeping and drooling. It was one of those days when the whole family would get up while my brother would refuse to get out of bed, and only after maybe an hour of vomiting blood with him, he would open his eyes, and say "huh?"

Breakfast was simple: cereal with toast topped with some coffee in the hotel restaraunt, packed our stuff into the car and headed for the cross-island ferry terminal. We reached the terminal, parked the car in it's designated lot (we had to drop the car off on the north island, before picking up a new one on south) and headed to the waiting area with luggage and various items in tow.

The cross-island ferry was really a scaled-down cruise which could hold up to maybe 20,000 odd passengers (i really don't know, it's just a whole load of people), and a couple of hundred of cars. there were two types of cruisers: the smaller, faster sort, of the pregnant-duckish types which we took. The journey was slated to take about an hour or so.

Getting on, I met the pleasant group of New Zealanders whom I previously met at the hotel pool last night. I helped tehm take some photos while finding spots to take my parents and brother (who thankfully removed the drool off his lips after his nap).

The cross-island journey was great: I finally discovered what a slipstream was after messing up my hair while sticking out my head over the handles of the deck balcony. It was like a calm weather, then as I stuck out my head, wooossshhh, I almost lost my glasses.

We arrived in Picton, the terminal city where the ferry docked. After finding the rental car, we loaded up and set off for the east coast of the south island.

The city (or town) of Picton went by without us noticing much, and we headed off to find the east coast, map and excited person (me) standing by to guide us. We headed for the town of Blenheim, had lunch (totally ripped off by this chinese restaraunt, which four out of five dishes were almost the same) and had the car air conditioning checked (it was really too warm).

The east coast of the south island wasabsolutely reminiscent of those BMW adverts where you'd see this BMW 5-series goign down the winding road with the hills going by. This was the same until we saw the Ocean. We drove until we were up right next to the Pacific Ocean, and the wind was really going. Oh, there's something I forgot to talk about.

The roads of NZ are numerous, but the roadkill is unparalleled is uncomparable to other countries: every twenty minutes or so, you'd see some poor unfortunate creature flattened such that It is no wonder the country's possum fur-trade is thriving (the animal is considered a pest and should be eradicated at all costs or simply when convenience comes). All that the possum-catcher has to do is drive around the country whithin two weeks and he'll be having a huge load of the stinking carcasses in the hold of his truck. No kidding.

We stopped at a roadside tourist store and restaurant, and decided to visit the beach. the beach was very stony, and windy (oh my goodness). The wind was so strong, any kite-flyer would be wild with excitement, that is, until his kite breaks off with the wind blowing and all. There was a photo taken, you can see my brother and myself facing the wind, and our hair is blown back so much, you can see us grinning with the force of the wind.

Cheers, Take care

Crawldaddy