National Park to Wellington, Over the Cook Straight, and to Nelson.

Ok, so having had a very chilled evening in National Park with some awesome food, I got about ten hours sleep to catch up, ready for the longest bus journey stage; National Park to Wellington, which took us about 6 hours including stops.

   We did have quite a few stops on the way, including getting out at a military museum to climb on the tank and get a photo (I didn't get one as my camera was stowed with the bags, but one is getting sent to me).
 Kiwi's like big things here. We drove through a town called Okahune which is famous for it's carrots. So of course, at the edge of town, there's a giant carrot.

  We stopped in a little place called  Bulls for lunch. The town has used it's name to create as many puns as possible; the police station was labled as Const-a-bull. Food was delect-a-bull. There was a little antique shop selling collect-a-bulls. Normally, I like puns, but this was just too much for me. They were everywhere, and got very repetative. Almost unbear-a-bull. (I'm sorry....)

Back on the bus for another three hours and we finally got to....

Wellington

 Wellington the capital of New Zealand is still only the third largest city. It was decided to make it the capital during the Gold rush on the South Island, to make sure they could keep hold of  the money,  and stop the South Island breaking away to make it's own country (I don't think this was likely, but people get concerned at the thought of losing money).

 The job back in Auckland came in handy here, as I had a free night in  a set of 4 and a half star apartments in the centre of the city, with a free breakfast. Score! So it was a nice quiet big room all to myself, with a nice comfy bed. It's the little things. 

  

 Only having a few hours of the working day (we had to get to the ferry port at 7 am the next  morning), I took a quick wander and then headed to Te Papa, the national Museum of New Zealand.  Te Papa translates as our place, and is one of the best museums I've seen. I only had an hour and a half in there, but you could easily spend a whole day. I was mainly looking at the Maori history stuff, and about the founding  of the country (with the British and the Maori), and learnt a lot.

 

 Had some great fish and chips that evening with some of the guys from the stray bus, and got a nice early night. 

Journey to the South Island

Getting up early wasn't a problem (especially with a hotel wake up call) and a quick taxi ride later, I was at the ferry port. 

 Now the Cook Straight (The bit between the North and South Islands) is beautiful, especially the sounds before getting to Picton. It was beautiful weather, nice and calm, so I took a lot of photos, here's some of my favourites.

Wellington got smaller....

And smaller...

First view of the South Island

First real view of the South Island

In the sounds

                                                          

Picton, where we got off

There were also some blue penguins in the water, but those guys move fast! 

 From Picton we took a bus out towards Blenhiem where we did a wine tasting, and a fudge tasting (Yum on both counts. Then we started towards Nelson, stopping for lunch near a little bridge where they've filmed some of the Hobbit apparently. 

You just can't escape the Lord of the Rings over here...

So after a nice relaxed journey day, I got dropped off in Nelson, which I'll tell you all about in the next entry. It may be a while though, tomorrow, I'm off to a little eco retreat hostel in Golden Bay to work for accomodation for an unknown amount of time!