Long travels and welcome arrival

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As I am sure many of you will realize, it takes a loooong time to get to the other side of the planet. The 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney went well enough (the benefit of first class flying is you can lay out flat and sleep half the way!). In Sydney we had 6 hours to sit in the airport as there was no place to store the luggage. This made for several hours of humorous people watching and a beverage to say we’ve had a drink in Australia . The last flight was three hours to get us into New Zealand at 11:40pm. Caught a ride to the hotel and went right to sleep.

Had a nice day in Wellington - the capital city of New Zealand - sleeping in then a late breakfast at the Coyote where we also had our first drink in New Zealand. We wandered about the cloudy city including the Te Papa, the national museum then stopped at a pub for a snack and some delicious New Zealand Pino Nior.

After our day of acclimating to the new time zone we were off the next morning for a three hour tour across Cook’s straight to the south island. It was cold for being out on the water in the morning, but being out there made for great pictures when we pulled into Picton. We checked right into our cottage which was very quaint and had a great claw foot tub. Picton is a cute little city about the same size as Oregon, WI where I live. We had some lunch outside and set out to hike the Bob’s Bay track (track = hiking trail). We had dinner at a place recommended by our guide books and returned to the cottage for a soak in the tub with some wine and cheese.

Leaving Picton the next morning we were on our way to Nelson. This is quite a scenic route, but it felt more like the drive of terror! Being the passenger in a car driving on the left side of the road on curvy, narrow mountain roads is horrifying! I was white-knuckling the handle the whole ride, holding my breath half of it and hollering out screeches of fear every few miles which I am sure did not help calm Mike’s nerves for driving. Though pretty, it was quite exhausting and stressful (at least for me. Mike seemed to be fine), but we made it to Nelson without incident.

Will tell you about Nelson in the next entry!

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