Sunday, July 24, 2016
Today I am catching up on the blog from the Interislander
Ferry that is taking us from Wellington (the North Island) to Picton (the South
Island). We had to get up by 6:15am
(ew!) in order to get up and out of the hotel, fill up the rental car with gas,
drop the car at the terminal, check in our luggage, and board the ferry. Of course we ended up going the wrong way on
the highway for a few minutes, which is so frustrating, because of course
anytime you want to turn around there is never a place to.
The car drop off is a strange thing. The ferry allows for cars, but with rentals
they prefer/insist that if you are renting from one location and returning to
another location that you actually change cars on the different islands. So, when we get off the ferry we’ll pick-up a
different car from Hertz. Hopefully it
all works out well. The drop off was
literally parking the car in a Hertz spot and then we just dropped the car key
in a mailbox-type bin…hopefully that was all we needed to do.
The ferry we are on is quite large, and we scored some nice
seats in the lookout lounge. The Cook
Strait is a little wavy this morning and the seas are supposed to be moderate
with up to 50 knot winds. I’m hoping
that my body doesn’t feel to sea sick.
I’ve noticed with this pregnancy I’m much more sensitive to motion and
we have several different boating adventures scheduled for this part of the
trip. The kiddos have been snacking and
playing on their different tech devices, so hopefully the 3.5 hour journey
today continues to go smoothly. Woodrow
commented that this is, “the perfect boat.”
And Theo is still convinced this was the big ship that Mason was on
earlier this month.
(So picking this up Monday morning) The ferry ride. Oy!
The kiddos were tired from waking up early and the thrill of the ferry
was only lasting so long. This ride was
a 3.5 hour ferry ride, and was rough.
Since the kids really hadn’t had any ipad/leappad playing time at all on
the trip, even on the long car ride days we let them have their devices while
we rode the boat and it was my lifesaver.
Mason spent most of the ride out on the deck of the boat walking around
enjoying the sea air and taking photos.
I’m so glad that he got to take the opportunity, and that we’re (I’m) at
a point where I can be comfortable with him doing one thing and me doing
another on trips. Unfortunately, once
we’d reached the more open waters in the Tasman Sea, the boat felt quite a bit
of motion, and I was not feeling good.
Tears streaming, slow breathing, trying all the tricks I’ve learned
among the years being a sailors daughter, but after an hour I was going to be
sick and Mason was nowhere in sight. I
quickly muttered to Theo to stay put in the chairs, not to move or talk to
anyone, and I hurried off with Woodrow to the bathroom, which was fortunately
quite close. I felt a little better
after actually physically being sick, but was ready for the ride to be
over. Mason eventually made his way back
to us and I passed out for a quick nap.
Once we were closer to the South Island the last 45 minutes were in a
sound which had much calmer waters, thank God!
It enabled me to feel much better before getting off the boat in
Picton.
For some reason I had been thinking all along that our drive
was going to be 4.5 hours for the day, so we quickly grabbed our luggage and
Mason grabbed the rental car. While
reviewing our driving directions I realized we only had a 2 hour drive to
Kaikoura which was great! We kind of
zipped through Picton thinking we had to get on our way, but we probably should
have grabbed lunch. We end up grazing for breakfast on what we have and then
eating a late lunch because there aren’t option everywhere, and then we drive
round and round for dinner. Anyways, the
town of Picton is small and a nice ocean town.
Once you get outside the city it is winery after winery for kilometers. Very fascinating and pretty. I can only imagine when the trees are fully
grown and blossoming. Right now they
look like little twigs in the ground since it’s winter.
As we got closer to Kaikoura we had a beautiful drive along
the ocean. The mountains along our right
and ocean to the left made for a pretty drive.
As we were driving along I spotted seals along the rocks, and we were
able to find a spot to pull over and take pictures. There were some other people pulled along the
side of the road as well, and the seals were everywhere. We only walked around for 10-15 minutes and
didn’t get to close trying to remember this is their habitat and we don’t want
to encourage the kiddos to get too close to wild animals, but it was so
cool! It would have been awesome to see
some swimming.
We headed into the small town centre in search of food since
it was after 3:00pm at this point. We
ended up at a café called Allure. The
food wasn’t quite what we were expecting.
We’re simple eaters, I guess. The
kids pancakes were wrapped with banana and peaches and lots of large pieces of
bacon. Mason’s plate was so full of two
different types of fries you could barely see the burger which was drenched in
aioli (like mayo) which he had requested not to have, and my “bagel with lox
and cream cheese” also had tomatoes, lettuce, and aioli…really aioli AND cream
cheese AND lox…and the bagel had some funky nut on it…but the service was great
and the owner was super friendly and nice to the kiddos, AND my fruit smoothly
was large and tasty.
After our linner, we ended up driving down a road we thought
was towards our hotel, but ended up taking us to the Kaikoura Peninsula, which
ended up being awesome because the view as the fog was rolling in and the sun
was setting was STUNNING! And, there
happened to be a seal colony there, so there were many seals lying right there
along the boardwalk and next to the beach.
We probably could have touched one-but didn’t. We hung out there for a bit before we got to
chilly and then made our way to our hotel.
We stayed at the Ocean View Apartments. Whew!
I could have stayed here the entire trip! A couple that runs the apartment complex
basically has 10 “hotel rooms” that were essentially single
house/apartments. There was a full kitchen,
two bedrooms, living room, dining room, washer/dryer, nice bathroom, and fireplace. It was so cozy! Sitting by the fireplace was relaxing, even
if we spent a lot of evening time doing laundry. We headed out later in the evening and picked
up Chinese and Subway for dinner and enjoyed it back in our apartment. Another evening enjoyed with a jetspa bath…it
seems to be big here, and I could get used to it.
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