We started our day with a hot shower to clean ourselves after the hike and prepare us for a travel day ahead of us. We were driving to the ferry in Picton to go to the north island.
After breakfast, we filled our fresh water tank and then rolled out from the camping site at 9 am. We topped up on diesel and started making our way back over the curvy mountain pass.
Apart from a nature call, we drove straight to the ferry terminal. We drove past many wineries, which seemed understandable as Marlborough is one of the largest wine regions in New Zealand.
We arrived at Picton and the ferry terminal at 12:15 pm with one hour to spare before final check-in. During this time we made ourselves some soup for lunch, which we ate in the car. Time passed, and we had eaten our lunch and drunk some coffee, before boarding a man from the ferry company came and asked us concerning an alga that is present only on the south island. He asked where we were from and then went on to say how beautiful Stockholm is and complained only that the E4 highway in Sweden is a bit boring.
At 1:50 pm or so, they started boarding the cars onto the ferry. We parked our van on the lower car deck and proceeded up to deck seven where we watched the ship leave the shore. Then we bought a coffee (a caramel latte, yum!) and a panini sandwich and sat down to watch our journey through some large windows in the front of the ship.
As the ship left the archipelago, the sea became a bit more rough, although it was still quite calm. Linnea felt a bit ill and needed to sit and watch the horizon in order not to get seasick. We both made it through without any incidents, but the ship was late on arrival in Wellington.
When we drove off the ship, we made our way towards a Countdown (the New Zealand branch of Woolworths) for some groceries. As we got to the parking garage for the store, we realised that our van was too big for the garage height and we had to find somewhere else to park. We ended up driving a couple of blocks down and turning back, not so much because we couldn’t find a parking spot, more because of the hectic traffic and needing to slow down in order to park in the spot.
We finally parked 700 meters from the store, walked there, and bought our supplies. From the store, we drove to our campsite for the night – Evans Bay Marina. It’s located next to the water and the docks for smaller boats. We fixed supper, wrote some blog post, and went to bed.
G’night! / Gustav & Linnea
