The passage

We arrive in Wellington late in the evening and spend the night in a terrible parking lot. It's right on the main street, it's full to capacity and a guy next to us is talking on the phone loudly while he's cooking at 10 o'clock in the evening. We prepare everything for the next morning, pack our backpacks for the ferry and get everything ready for coffee. The alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and we want as little stress as possible at such an early hour. Finally in bed, I still can't calm down and it's a very sleepless night for me. Definitely a combination of excitement and unrest on the pitch. I jump out of bed in the morning and start scurrying around. Maren stays there until shortly before 6 and I'm basically sitting in the driver's cab ready to drive off. We arrived at the port with the utmost punctuality, checked in and then stood in the vehicle queue for an hour. While we watch one truck after another drive into the ferry, we first make a snack. Despite my concern that we don't all have room in life, we find a place for our camper Willi between smelly animal trucks. On the ferry we first line up at the coffee bar. When it's finally our turn, the bar boy tells us that you can only pay with cash. However, we can get a “voucher” for coffee at the other bar and use it to come back. So we stand in the next line and then line up again at the coffee bar. In the end we have our coffee after about an hour, the ferry has already left in the meantime and we look for a place outside. All of a sudden it's incredibly cold and windy. I ask Maren to hold my coffee mug for a moment so I can put on my sweater. To do this, I go into a doorway so as not to be completely blown away. In these few seconds, less than a minute, Maren actually sees dolphins.... which of course were gone when I looked at the water. That was definitely karma, because a few days ago I said that dolphins are actually not that special to see because you always see them everywhere. It then becomes too windy for us at the top and we look for a more sheltered place. Maren quickly gets too cold and looks for a place inside. Worried that I'm missing something and with a lot of hope and a great desire to see a whale, I stay outside. Little by little I put on everything I have with me and stare at the water for 3 hours. It was incredibly beautiful and mediating, but unfortunately a whale didn't show itself to me. The trip was over faster than expected and I only needed one Zofran and was only close to getting seasick once. We drive to our campsite right in Picton and do a laundry/clean up day. In the afternoon we tried to go on a short hike, but then we didn't feel like it anymore and so it was just a short walk. We start the next morning with a short jog for me and a big one for Maren. I prepare breakfast during this time and we leave the place just 2 hours after the official checkout time.