Blogs from Picton, Marlborough, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 3

here are some photos of my last few days in picton. all together rather uneventful. i finished up cleaning work and driving work yesterday. all paid up and ready to party....to bring in the new year with style!! well, maybe not so much style, but fun in a city at least!! today i drove from picton to christchurch....it took most of the day. the drive was beautiful. i have come to expect nothing less. i saw a few snow covered peaks descending to black sand beaches. much of the drive i spent on roads carved into moutnain sides looking out onto the water. the roads doubled back and forth around the mountains and through them with scary dark tunnels. i rounded on corner and was looking out onto a small bay....i saw something move above the ... read more

well, it's christmas day and i am missing ardie knocking on my door at 7am. more than rising early i am missing my family and christmas food. i'll tell you why it doesn't feel like christmas....why i'm (as my mom put it in a recent email) feeling droopy. i worked this morning....scrubbing toilets til noon (they pay double on christmas day i hear). i will continue to drive to the ferry three times today and as usual visit the gym and read in between. in fact today is a droopy day for everyone here....we're all a little lonely i think. all used to being with family and in the northern hemisphere's harsh weather for christmas. the sun shining bright and hot, walking around in tanks and shorts is unusual for a christmas day. this may well ... read more

From Queenstown where I last wrote, I made my way south on the Intercity bus to Te Anau. Here I would wait for my friends Brian and Caroline to catch me up, for Brian and I would soon embark on the Kepler track together, leaving Caroline to watch movies, drink wine and kick back and relax. I spent a couple of days in Te Anau doing not much of anything, though this proved a profitable use of time come the walk itself. I spent the majority of my time in the YHA place in Te Anau which had a great range of movies for lending. One I managed to fit in was "Whale Rider", a tale about Maori in the present day which was deeply affecting and I recommend it to everyone (on a side note, ... read more

After saying goodbye to Reg, we jumped on the ferry, off to the southern 'party' island. We arrived in Picton at around 4, after gliding across the Cook Straight, though the Marborough Sounds. Our South Island steed was a little younger and classier than Reg and so we christened him Walter, which seemed to us to fit like the proverbial glove; his windscreen is chipped and cracked like mad though, so I know that it's only a matter of time till it falls through on us mid-motorway - joy. ... We stopped in Nelson, at the Palace Backpackers Lodge - the weirdest, but more characterful lodge yet. It's kind of a cross between a Disney haunted house and Mrs. Madrigal's towering apartments described in Maupin's 'Tales Of The City'; full of winding corridoors, oak panels and ... read more

Its been only 5 mins since we last sent you an entry but we thought we'd take the opportunity to wrap up the South Island ... We finished up in Nelson (nice little art gallery) before heading down the coast to some of the remote parts of Marlboro Sound - Okiwi Bay, Duncan Bay, Penzance etc. All really beautiful and slow moving pace of life. Water was so clear but still a littleto chilly to have a dip - Matt desperately wants to .... From there we ventured to Havelock, the world capital for green lipped mussels!!! Oh yes i hear you say, a very prestiguos place indeed. We sampled some at Mussel Boys were the waiters are all skantlky clad young men ... only kidding! We stuffed ourselves to the gills and Philpa almost burst! ... read more