Sailing to the South Island

Our last day in Wellington we had breakfast and then walked to pick up our rental car.
Rosie forgot her credit card pin so I had to pay for the whole rental!

We did a lot of shopping for supplies which I found very tiring. Shopping ugh. We then drove to the Wellington holiday park and attempted to set up the tent for the first time. It was pretty saggy, luckily it wasn't too windy. After dinner we went out again for a bit more shopping! I drove for the first time, Ros had been doing the driving while I navigated all day.
We had showers and got settled in the tent for the night at 8pm. We have an early start for the ferry tomorrow.

Working out the tent!

Big saggy, but it'll do!

Exhausted from shopping and jet lag!

Testing out the sleeping mats

We got up at 6:30am after a restless night's sleep for me. Rosie says she slept ok, I think my sleeping bag is too thin. We whipped the tent down much faster than we put it up and were on the road just after 7. It was a good thing we were so early because there was a lot of traffic and it took us almost an hour to drive the 10km to the ferry. The final check in time was 8am and we were a few minutes after. There were still plenty of cars behind us though and once we had checked in all the cars went on first so we got to skip past all the waiting camper vans.

Tired on the ferry

A few campers on board!

Luckily the water was much calmer today

 We had planned to arrive in time for breakfast before the ferry but that didn't happen so after we watched the ferry depart from the observation deck we went a café for food and hot drinks. The ferry crossing was really calm, very different from the water we had seen a few days ago. After we had checked out all the decks and food places we spent most of the journey in reclining chairs at the front of one of the decks watching the ocean. Half an hour before docking we went back out to the decks to see more of the views. The scenery on the ferry crossing was spectacular and it was beautiful weather.

Woken up a bit now!

After leaving the ferry we parked at the information centre and did a short walk to Bob's Bay.
We drove along the very windy Queen Charlotte drive to get to our campsite for the night. We stopped for a late lunch on the way.

Back on dry land

Our first South Island walk

Another ferry passing by

Our campsite is a little farm and is really nice. We were given some muffins and animal feed when we arrived. First we pitched the tent and then we ate the muffins and fed some of the sheep and goats. We did a much better job with the tent today. A good thing because the rain will start tonight.
In the evening we took a walk from the campsite across the fields and through the woods to a waterfall. When we came back we made burgers for dinner. They were delicious.

Layering down!

Nooo, it's not time to get up yet!