Wellington to Picton

---

We get up early to catch the ferry to Picton. The Cook Strait crossing can be a little dicey due to southerly winds (like northerlies in the northern hemisphere), but we have a beautiful day and the three-hour crossing is uneventful. Coming through Tory Sound into Picton, Michael and I are both reminded of ferry rides in the San Juan Islands near Seattle. The ferry is a huge ship that was once a cruise ship in Poland, so is very fast and stable. We are finally on the South Island!
Upon arrival at the ferry terminal there is a van waiting to take guests to The Villa, the backpacker’s hotel where we are registered. When we get to the van it is already full of passengers and luggage, so a girl in a competitors van calls to our driver and says, “I’ll drop them off for you”. NZ is like stepping back in time to the 1950’s. We are staying in places that don’t have any locks on the doors. You can leave your luggage lying around and nobody bothers it. Everyone is so friendly and helpful. This really is paradise. If it weren’t so remote we would have a hard time leaving (which we probably will anyway).
We arrived at our hotel and booked a water taxi for tomorrow to take us to the Queen Charlotte track. A bonus of having to be delivered and picked up at the track by water taxi is that the taxi picks up your big packs every morning and delivers them to the dock by where you are spending the night. Also on this track there are accommodations that are not huts, so our hotel makes those arrangements for us as well. It will be nice to sleep in real beds every night. We decide that we will spend 3 nights on the track then come back to Picton for a wine tour before leaving. The hotel owner tells us to come back later and he will have all the vouchers done for our trips.
We walk around town and find a nice little café for lunch. We hope to go back for dinner. We return to the hotel and get our vouchers. We find out that we will need food for breakfasts and lunches, as the places we are staying don’t offer food, but we can have dinners near our accommodations, which we decide to do.
We leave to go to the grocery store and end up getting fried chicken take-away for dinner since we need to get back to pack our bags for the next three days.

---