South Island - Marlborough Sounds

Greetings everyone!! We left Wellington on Friday morning, bright and early. A 6 AM wake-up, loaded the bikes and the backpack into our really cute (and slightly inadequate for the hills of the south island) car and headed down for the 7:15 AM ferry check-in. The ferry ride was great. Got heaps of photos to share. It was raining in Wello that day and as we entered the Queen Charlotte Sound at the south island the sun was shining and we were happy to arrive. The ferry docks in Picton. It's a cute little town and we had fush & chups (this is a kiwi joke on how they say this) at a little takeaway place and ate them on a park bench. A slight detour took us to Blenheim (won't go into why here) and unfortunately we were not on our way to our destination until well past 3:30 PM (the ferry landed at 11:30, so you can imagine that being well over 3 hours behind wasn't ideal). Finally returning to Picton and then up the Queen Charlotte Drive, we headed to Hopewell, a little "backpackers" where we planned to spend the next 3 days. I put this in quotes as this is kind of the cream of the crop of the NZ backpackers, and NZ backpackers are already miles and miles above hostels elsewhere in the world as it is. This little place is far, far off the beaten track. In fact, Andrew said it's the furthest off the beaten track he thinks he's ever been. The best way to get there is by water taxi, however with the bikes and such (and the fact that it costs something like $280 to take the water taxi from Picton), we elected to drive - as many other people do. It was a hell of a drive! All told, I think it took us 2.5 hours to drive about 65 km. No word of a lie! The roads are narrow and winding all along the coast of the sounds (to get to Kenepuru Sound) and at least 25 km of it is gravel (or unsealed as they call it here). Both of us had car sickness. Ugh! We had to take one good break partway through the trip to just sit for a few minutes. Hopewell is amazing! The place itself is stellar - kayaking and mountain biking were the two things we decided to try out while staying there. Then we also got a chance to laze in the hammocks, retreat to the hot tub that is on the ledge of the rocky shore of the water of the sound, and walk along the beach at low tide to collect oysters, which were so plentiful that each guest who went and collected them had heaps to share with everyone else. It's a small place (maybe 30 guests and it wasn't full yet this past weekend) so we got to know everyone who was visiting. It was very nice, very nice indeed.

We left the Marlborough Sounds yesterday in rain and headed to Nelson. We were so happy to get off the twisty road of the sounds. Nelson is a really great little town with lots to offer. So when we arrived yesterday, although it was raining quite hard, we still had a chance to walk around the main centre town area and take in a coffee at a local cafe. Today the weather cleared progressively and we went for a late-day ride. I left Andrew in a suburb called Richmond, where he joined a weekly bike race. I could have done the social ride, but I opted to have some alone time. The ride back was really nice. Tomorrow we hope the weather will cooperate for some more riding. Fingers crossed. Photos will have to wait til my return - but there will be plenty of really great shots! It truly is amazingly beautiful in the south.