Off to the South Island

It has been quite the interesting day with several quirky happenings.

First of all, I sat on a chair at the Dwellington and it broke and I went through the seat, partway. Goldilocks with more silver than golden hair! It was so funny. Thank heavens, I didn’t get hurt at all. Maybe my pride a bit. No photo taken, thank heavens. Haha.

We packed up our car and drove a short distance to the Interislander ferry terminal. Our 8:45 a.m. booking to the South Island was made by the Apex car rental company months ago so all went very easily.

The weather was perfect for a 3 1/2 hour trip across the Cook Strait. The sun was shining and the sea was calm. The views as we went through the Queen Charlotte Sound were awesome.

The ferry unloaded in Picton at 12:15 p.m. We didn’t spend any time in this town this time, as we will be there once again at the end of March.

Our easy drive to Mapua, our first spot to stay on the North Island, took about 2 1/2 hours. We drove through the town of Havelock and stopped in Nelson which has the reputation of being the sunniest place in New Zealand. We really liked this small city (pop. 45,000) and would like to revisit it in the next few days. Nelson is beautiful small city with around 45,000 citizens. It's located on top tof the South Island and apparently is a great place to live. The nickname "Sunny Nelson" is earned because it gets around 2,500h of sunshine per year. Guelph gets around 1,948 hours.

We also stopped for lunch at Pelorus Bridge which was used as one of the film locations for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - the barrel scene.

We arrived at our Air BnB at around 5 p.m. we had picked up a Greek salad and some roasted chicken so made a good salad for dinner. I put our dishes on the table and we didn’t notice that the hostess’ pet chicken, Pecker, had jumped on the table and was eating Chris’ salad! What a laugh we had thinking about a chicken eating a salad made with chicken.

We shooed her away, after she stepped into the salad, and when we turned our backs again, one of the hostess’ five Ragdoll cats was sitting in my chair and eyeing my chicken!

This place is very beautiful though and full of animals and birds. We are very pleased that we are spending 5 nights in this lovely spot.Read more