New Zealand #12 - Chilling before crossing Cook Strait - Picton, South Island

After our short visit to Cloudy Bay winery in Blenheim we continued on to Picton, where we will chill for a few days and do essential maintenance before taking the ferry to North Island.

Looking out the bay to Marlborough Sound.

We're very surprised by Picton, because about an hour from our home in Canada there is another Picton, and the geographic setting of the two towns is very similar, on a bay surrounded by hills, except the New Zealand version has a larger bay and the hills are higher.

From the marina looking back towards our caravan park.

We settle in to one of our nicer motels (remember - New Zealand English for cabin) and as first priority do a very large and overdue laundry. We are getting much better internet connections in New Zealand than we had in Australia so the next day brightonbonnie decides to Facetime our grand-daughters, and during the call attempts to show them the motel; unfortunately she can't figure out to reverse the camera so spends a lot of time showing them a selfie, which results in a long and increasingly louder international lesson from eldest grand-daughter on how to reverse the camera. Finally I intervene, and the girls get the motel tour - as do you (the before shots of course)...

Do you remember the two-burner hotplate in Westport?

After that with full sun and the temperature peaking at 20 Celsius it's time to head into town to check things out and do some personal maintenance. There's a direct route through a very nice marina which connects to the town center via a small footbridge. Lots of boats and wildlife...

...and a passing man points out the manta ray which frequents the marina.

brightonbonnie tries to get her nails done but none of the shops do gel fill (whatever that is?). She has more success finding a hairdresser, but while getting her fringe (New Zealand English) trimmed finds out the Aussie/Kiwi meaning of bang (Canadian English), and reflects back on the impact she might have had on her male cutter in Alice Springs when she asked to have her bangs trimmed!

View from the ferry quay back towards the marina.

Ferry similar to ours about to depart. You can see vehicles aft - ours will not be going with us.

During this lesson on interesting English-language equivalents I wander over to the ferry quay to confirm our car booking. All the rental companies have separate fleets for South and North Island, so you don't take your car across, instead dropping it at your departure terminal and picking up another at your destination.

I also upgrade our ferry tickets. The caravan park manager in Westport suggested we do this because we have a chain loyalty card; like in Oz we get 10% off our park bookings, but also get discounts with affiliated vendors like the ferry. The discount just about pays to upgrade to the lounge, where we get better seating and don't have to queue or pay for drinks and food. Brilliant!

The next day's maintenance includes cleaning out the car and repacking our bags for the ferry. Unexpectedly we have a problem with our main credit card. A few days ago, for the first time either in Oz or here, I had a problem on-line booking an upcoming caravan park and was knocked off their site a few times. Apparently my multiple attempts to re-book looked odd to my card provider's computerized, no human in the loop, fraud detection app - newly activated, and I was assured when I advised them I would be traveling for 3 months, 'it would never let me down'. Thankfully the caravan park let me use their line to call Canada and after a very very long discussion my card was reactivated. After that it was time for a very long and pleasant walk north-east out of town towards Waikawa to relax.

Another view of the bay as we prepare to leave South Island after an amazing 2 week roadtrip!

PS - if you've enjoyed this post please check out my first 11 New Zealand posts, the previous 19 posts in my Australia series, and the 3 before that as we started our 90 day roadtrip in Tahiti!

And please join us in my next post as we take the ferry across Cook Strait to Wellington on the North Island.

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!steemitworldmap -41.290593 lat 174.001004 long Picton South Island New Zealand d3scr