The south

I felt much better after a good nights sleep and was ready to leave Wellington and head for South Island. However, our ferry wasn't until the afternoon so we decided to spend the morning looking round town some more. We started at the post office because Matt wanted to send a parcel but for some reason post offices aren't open on Saturdays in New Zealand, not even for the morning. Instead we went to the Wellington museum mainly for the use of wifi. It did have a nice timeline on one of the floors though that explained events that occurred in Wellington throughout the 20th century. 

After that we walked round a bit trying to find somewhere for a cheap sandwich and managed to find a good place. I had a chicken, avocado and spicy apricot sauce panini which was very tasty. We felt it was time to go get our bags and catch a bus to the ferry after food. We had to get off the bus at the train station and realised we'd need another bus to the ferry terminal but unfortunately we were too late. We didn't realise this at the time but we needed to be at the ferry 45 minutes early. This meant the bus had already left the train station. Luckily a nice lady at the station help desk told us to get the bus that was dropping off passengers to drive back to the ferry with us. The bus driver wasn't the happiest with us but we got to the ferry just in time to check our big bags in and board the ferry as everyone else just started to walk on. I'm not a fan of leaving it to the last minute but it was nice not waiting. The panic of getting there wasn't so nice though. 

After a nice hot chocolate and a calm sit down the ferry set off although it was around half an hour late. I thought it was quite smooth until we got out of the bay; I'm not a fan of ferries anymore. I felt so sick and it didn't help that some old man was throwing up loudly in a bag not far from us and a baby right next to us threw up on its mother. I managed to drift off and slept through the worst of it meaning when I woke up it was rather pleasant with stunning views of the Queen Charlotte sounds coming into Picton. Eventually, we arrived in Picton and go off the ferry. It was dark by this time and we hadn't got anywhere to stay. Luckily there were some backpacker places picking up guests so we went over and asked somewhere called Tombstone backpackers if they had any spare beds. Lucky for us they did and so we hopped in the minibus and five minutes later were checking in. 

We hadn't got any food so we had to quickly run to the supermarket before it closed. Bacon was cheap so we had carbonara which wasn't the best. The sauce tasted a little odd. But the hostel was lovely and by some coincidence there was a girl we'd gone to Bromo (Indonesia) with at the hostel! We chatted to her for a while and took advantage of the free hot tub. South island is good so far.