Singing in the Rain

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Outside its raining New Zealand Fashion, that is to say its heavy and warm. So its a good time to up-date you on our travels.

Lets go back to that car park in Wellington, after a surprisingly good nights sleep we were up early to catch the 8am ferry to the South Island. Although we had some trepidation about this crossing, given its reputation , it was in fact remarkably smooth and the journey through Queen Charlotte Sound is particularly beautiful. So now begins our exploration of the South Island. Already we can see it is more rugged and sparsely populated. The traffic on the roads seems to comprise of Logging trucks or camper vans. The first part of our trip took us from Picton to Nelson. This begins with a drive through the Marlborough wine region, (no complaints there) then on through attractive twisting Richmond Range. On arrival we treated ourselves to a good bottle of wine and a Steak and Chips dinner cooked on a campsite fire.

Today we have driven on even further through more mountain passes which we believe would have been spectacular had we been able to see them. But, as we said today is a New Zealand Rain Day and everything is shrouded in low cloud including us at times.

We are staying overnight at Carters Beach and we have been along the coast to view the Seal colony; however that was a bit boring as they didn't appear to have any beach balls to play with and were clearly as unimpressed with the weather as we were. I was tempted to get a bucket of fish and see if they would do some tricks for us but we thought better of it.

I was rather liking this 50th thing, with it being all good food and fine wine an all, but all that is over now ....tonight its a cup of tea with Baked Beans on Toast in the Communal Kitchen....... Oh how life can change so suddenly!

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