going from north to south

Early rise and shine again, but guess what, the weather has finally changed! And for the better as well! I am so glad to see those fluffy clouds again as well as the clear blue sky.

After breakfast, we started to pack our stuff into the bus and than it was onwards to the ferry coz today we were going to make the crossing from the North Island to the South and with the weather looking like it should be, it made us all smile and feeling happy.

Maybe this is wrong of me to say and although we saw many beautiful things and had loads of fun, I am not one bit sad to leave the North Island behind because of the cold and depressing weather of the past few days and I am so looking forward to visiting the South.

Secretly I was hoping that everyone was wrong about the South and it being the cold and rainy part of the country. This just wasn't possible coz we went through all of that already! Been there, done that and wanted to move on thank you very much!

Boarding took about half an hour and once we’ve got sailing, we could go outside and were stunned because of the amazing views. I have to admit that indeed everything looks so much better with the sun hovering high in the sky.

Our „cruise” was going to take about 3 hours and went all the way from Wellington through the Cook Straight and the Tory Channel to the Queen Charlotte Sound and ended in Picton. Quite a distance when you have a look at the map. I always imagined it more close to each other, but now I knew this wasn’t the case.

As soon as we arrived in Picton we could get of the ferry and we started our trip towards Nelson, which was going to be our home base for tonight.

Since the distance is quite a bit as well, our tourleaders made sure we were going to have a few stops along the way. The first one being almost more than an hour later at a small winery called Forrest. Here we had the opportunity to taste some wines, four in total to be exact, but sadly enough not one of them blew me of my socks like the wine did to me a few years back when we were in Australia.

Luckily we stayed not all that long, after all, once we tasted the wine and enjoyed the sun a bit, it was time to move on. Yet again an hour later (more or less),we ended up at a small place which is said to be one of the many movie sets for lord of the Rings. It is but a small river where you could do the Totara Walk, which is about 5 minutes, but the view is amazing and at this small river you can as well see if you are a real champion in bouncing boulders, which I definitely am not!

With the sun on our backs and faces, it was just to good to be true and I was more than glad that we left the North Island behind. Sadly enough we couldn't stay here, we still needed to drive for almost an hour to Nelson, where we arrived at 4 PM.

Since we still needed to pack lunch for our trip to the Abel Tasman NP, we decided to go to the supermarket together with a few members of our group as well as our tourleaders, who had to be there in the first place coz they were going to make us a BBQ later this evening but when we arrived back at the bus at the appointed hour, we kept on waiting and waiting for someone, who turned out the be Helen, one of our responsible tourleaders.

I don’t know what she was doing, but me and Tania still wanted to go for a run before dinner and with the clock ticking the minutes away, this was going to be difficult.

Luckily she arrived back at 5.45 PM, more than half an hour later than she was supposed to and with a short drive back to the hotel, we quickly changed into our running gear and went for another lesson. For me this was number 5, but I guess for Tania it was number 14 or something like that, boy, she can run! I on the other hand was surprised to learn that I could do 2 sessions of a 3 minutes run and I am ready for more, but that will have to wait for another day.

Dinner was at 7 PM and to our surprise me and Tania made it in the nick of time and guess what, we could even enjoy the nibbles and snacks before our dinner. Or we good or our we good! Our tourleaders were still preparing the BBQ and when the meat was ready, so were we to start eating.

Running sure makes you wanna eat more because all of a sudden I stacked up an entire plate without even realizing it and I still had room for dessert.

Once back in the room, I skyped home to let everyone know that I was still alive, took a hot shower and most importantly uploaded my pictures as well as my blog. When it was almost midnight, I called it a night coz tomorrow another early day awaited us!