Reunited with the South Island

Hello South Island! It feels our time on the North Island has gone by within the blink of an eye and suddenly we are sat on the ferry headed across the small stretch of sea that separates two different but equally beautiful islands. Our ferry left at 8.30am and we needed to be signed in and queuing by 7.30 so we had a bit of an early start this morning to make sure we were up and ready to leave on time. Once on-board and with the van safely secured below deck we went to scope the boat out. We had a different boat to last time and unfortunately this one didn't have a nice viewing platform out the front of the ship which was a shame because that's the area we saw dolphins from. It did have other observation areas at the sides but with no seating nearby there was no chance of any crew really alerting you if they saw dolphins at all like last time. Instead we tracked down the best looking cafe that had a proper coffee machine and got our morning caffine hit a long with a pretty tasty pizza. I forgot that with our Top 10 card we also get discount on-board the boat so we missed out on a saving on these purchases. After a couple of hours we were heading into the Malborough Sounds of the South Island and it wasn't too long before we docked and disembarked. We realised we hadn't really seen Picton so we had a brief stroll around town before dumping and filling up the van. I had seen on the map that from Picton you can either drive the highway 1 south to Blenheim which takes 25 minutes or go a long a windy coastal route that also ends up just outside Blenheim. I thought it didn't look too much longer so we opted for the scenic route. Within 20 minutes or so we came to our first amazing view point overlooking the sound we just came down on the ferry. A further 20 minutes down the road we hit another view point which was even more spectacular overlooking the coast in the direction we would we driving in. It was then that I checked the map to see we'd barely driven any distance at all and with all the tight bends and hilly roads it was taking much longer than expected. We decided that we had committed to this so persevered. The road then became single laned really because of the size of the van and all gravel/dirt track. Luckily we only passed a handful of cars the whole route but still it was rather daunting. At one point we even saw a car off the side of the cliff directly off the road that had nose dived and was now only being held up by trees. The gravel made the driving harder and Nick did amazingly well at handling it especially on places where large pot holes and bumps had formed. We passed through several small bays with a handful of houses in each and I felt sorry for the people living there having to drive such a poorly maintained road everyday. The weather was as beautiful as the scenery and it felt very refreshing to be driving a road clearly not many people use and seeing areas untouched by most tourists. After a couple of hours we hit a man digging in the road trying to fix a bridge that had been washed out. We thought this was the end of our journey and we'd have to turn back but thankfully he had dug out an alternative road around the bridge so although he didn't ackwolodge us for about 5 minutes we were so grateful when he signalled us to pass over. After this we had a small stretch of about 1km where the road barely fitted our van, with tall subery on each side it was sheer panic and hoping we didn't meet anyone here. Thankfully we didn't and although the road was worse after this for a while and we had one stage of it being so wet that we were worried we'd get stuck trying to get uphill, for all the views and scenery it was worth it. Not sure Nick agrees with me and he definitely wants me to research roads and timings more in future but I had fun. It was the best feeling when we hit tarmac roads again as we looked out over a flat valley full of vineyards and we knew we were very close the Blenheim, one of NZ biggest winery towns. We made it in one piece and checked in to a campsite for the night where I spent hours doing washing because they only had one dryer and one lady occupied it for about 2.5 hours. It's amazing how two roads that start and end at the same places can differ in journey time by about 3 hours!Read more