Picton, New Zealand

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Today was our last day in the South Island. We headed out to see the whales around 9:00am this morning and we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us. On our way we drove by a lookout and mom said she saw seals so I found a place down the road to turn around and pulled back onto the road. Problem is, I pulled into the RIGHT lane, absentmindedly. Neither of us caught it and I must have gone that way for a quarter of a mile before my mom screamed, “YOU’RE DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE!!” Luckily, no cars had been coming our way. We SAFELY made it to the lookout and found SEALLLLLLLLS!!!! Some of them were fighting, some lazing around, and some were little seal pups with tons of energy. They were so cute! And noisy!

We arrived at Kaikoura and learned the status of our whale sight-seeing tour was pending due to high winds (in excess of 50 knots in the open sea), which were making the seas too rough. It did end up being cancelled but we weren’t too disappointed. It actually turned into a great thing because we were able to do so many more things that we wouldn’t have gotten a chance to do. We shopped in all of the stores in Kaikoura, got coffee at a café on the beach, and mom sat on a bench while I walked along the beach, collecting rocks and taking pictures. Yes, I realize the rocks are going to add a lot of weight to my luggage, but they’re so cool! I want to do some projects with them.

We headed back to Picton and searched for a place to eat dinner. I’m really picky so we were having a hard time. We finally decided and mom had steak, salad, and fries and I had pumpkin soup which was good except for this weird white glop of stuff on top of it, which I took off (mom said it was sour cream…but I didn’t really know what it was.

That night I had a nice talk with the owners of the B&B Eco Lodge. We compared New Zealand to the US from government, to the economy, to health care, education, etc. It was fascinating! I learned so much! For example, they asked me how much an antibiotic would cost in the States without insurance and I said usually over a hundred dollars. Their jaws dropped. They said WITHOUT insurance, an antibiotic here would cost $3.00!!!! And that’s in NZ money so that’s like $1.77 in American dollars. WITHOUT INSURANCE! And they don’t have socialized medicine! (It is government subsidized, though) It really makes me frustrated that our pharmaceutical manufacturing companies have so much power that they have the capability to inflate these prices so much. Anyway, this isn’t for political debates so I’m off-topic…

It was interesting to learn so much about New Zealand and their perspective on things, as well as to offer up as much as I knew about the US’ views on the same topics. I learned so much tonight!

Ashley

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