Heading to the north island

  Picton, New Zealand
Monday, June 25, 2007

Last days in the South island

A couple of days later we were back on the East coast heading towards the ferry to the North island. The coastal route is equally beautiful with turquoise blue sea but the weather again started to play tricks on us: this time it was rain. In Kaikura we wanted to take a trip to see the whales but the sea was too rough and all boat trip had been cancelled. The forecast wasn't good either for the next two days and as much as we wanted to see those whales, we couldn't afford to wait. We went instead for a walk along the windy cliffs and saw some fur seals up close. It was wet, cold and miserable...we looked for a nice and warm place to rest in town but there is none to be found here. Surely they know that winter is cold and wet and miserable, but yet they prefer to wear hats inside! We kept bumping into a girl from Quebec who didn't enjoy the cold either: "People think that I am used to it, but not at all because in Quebec we put the heating on!"

New Zealand is also a wine producer

Heading north we reached the wine town of Bleinheim. You French readers may not know about this, but there are a few other countries around the world making decent wine;-) And New Zealand is one of them. That we truly didn't know! Bleinheim, in the north is the biggest white wine region in NZ. Clearly, it was our duty to sample their production, otherwise we couldn't honestly claim being responsible travellers anymore. Hummm,not bad!... We bought a few bottles for the cellar of our campa!

Crossing the Cook strait
 
We took a huge ferry to cross the Cook strait that separates the south and north islands. The weather was sunny but the sea rough, and even on such a big boat we could feel it! Three hours later we reached Wellington, the capital of NZ; it's very urban with roads and cars everywhere, the quietness of the south island was definitely behind us.