Goodbye North Island - hello South Island

Day 36 - 10/16/23

Today we left the North Island with the ferry from Wellington to Picton (South Island). The comfort on these ferries is pretty good and in contrast to the murmuring on the planes, they can not only speak clearly, but also have very good loudspeakers - it's okay.

Picton is a small, sleepy-looking town. Our accommodation is located a little outside, directly on the bay at the boat harbor. What is striking here is that you hardly meet any people on the move and the houses with high, privacy-protecting fences have more of a fortress effect. Quite a contrast to what we saw in the North Island. We're only here for 1 night because our original accommodation told us shortly before we started our trip that they hadn't rented out for 3 years - so we looked for and found a replacement and are excited to see what awaits us on the north side of the South Island from tomorrow.

The South Island is significantly less populated - of New Zealand's approximately 5.1 million inhabitants, only 1 million people live here. Almost a third of New Zealand's total population lives in Auckland alone. Around 87% of people in New Zealand live in cities.