We spent the night in Kaikoura last night. While the little town wasn't very big, it did have a nice view of the surrounding shoreline and snow-covered mountains. This was taken from a downtown park (foreground) showing the mountains in the distance:
We left Kaikoura and headed about 100 miles north on Hwy 1 to Picton, where we took the ferry to Wellington, on the North Island. The route was pretty much along the coastline and the shoreline looked a lot like what we've seen elsewhere in NZ...beautiful and rocky:
Picton is a really small little town with apparently one industry...the ferries that navigate the Cook Straits to Wellington on the North Island. The ferry terminal was pretty neat and well-organized, and believe me, a lot easier to navigate than the normal airport check-in jungle.
Adjacent to the terminal was the Edwin Fox Museum and since we were a little early, I decided to go take a look. The Edwin Fox was a wooden sailing ship built in 1853 in Calcutta by English traders. It's the oldest surviving commercial sailing ship and, in addition to plying the waters between England and India for decades, it carried French troops into the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade), carried settlers and convicts to Australia, became a freezer ship for freezing mutton around the turn of the century, and finally became a coal barge until it was scuttled around 1915 or so. It sat on a sand bar for 80 years or so before it was salvaged and brought to the museum. The museum was quite interesting and they had the ship in dry dock. As you can see from this pic...the girl's not in very good shape:
We sailed from Picton to Wellington on the MS Kaitaki. You can see the ship moored to the dock in Picton:
The trip from Picton to Wellington took about 3 1/2 hours by the time we got going. We sailed from Picton through Queen Charlotte Sound and across the Cook Straits to Wellington. At parts of the sail through the Sound, you could have tossed a baseball to the shoreline, rocky though it was:
The vessel was very nice, clean, and well-appointed with a number of passenger lounges and cafes. We arrived in Wellington around 4:30 or so, got off the ferry, picked up our car and our luggage, and were at our hotel by around 6:00 or so. We're spending tomorrow in Wellington until around 3:00 and then heading north for the night to Wanganui on the west coast of the North Island.
Pat's Paragraph............. We are running out of time. Our list is long of things we wanted to see and do and but the time and distance is playing havoc with our plans. Physics has proven that you can't be on both sides of the island at the same time. And yet the things we want to do are far away from each other, so now it's time to trim the 'to do' lists and it's hard. sigh... but it's time to prioritize...
Okay Big News! Last night we reached a new high in bathrooms! We had 2 (!!!) towel bars and one was longer than 18 inches! Also, we had a spa tub! The bathroom was the nicest we have had on this trip with a heated towel bar and even heat lamps in the ceiling. All in white, silver and gold. Verrry nice.
A quick rich scheme... I lost my L'Oreal mascara, where I have no idea but it is gone. So I went to buy more. Well that is impossible because the stores carry L'Oreal creams and lotions but no make-up. So I broke down and bought Mabelline for $15.00, ouch! Well guess what I found in their big department store, Ballentynes? L'Oreal make-up. And the tube of mascara that you and I can buy for around $8, sells in the US for $8.00 sells here for $30.00!!!! 1 tube! And no professional make-up artist to put it on you, just the make-up. So it proves that even if I had found it, I wouldn't have paid that much for it any way. So if we invest a bundle in mascara and ship it over here and sell it on the black market at $15.00, we'd double our investment! Anybody in??
