Day 20 - From Wellington to Picton - heading to the South Island!

03.01.2015

I set my alarm because I have to fill the parking meter at 10:00 and check out at the same time. My bag is incredibly heavy and I wonder why. I only bought the really light Kauri bowls and a few small things. I still have my toiletries in my day bag, which I usually only take to hotels when I stay overnight. Well. I heave the thing into the trunk and go to the parking meter, which still says: Free Parking. Unfortunately, it doesn't say for how long. Because on Saturdays, parking is free for 2 hours from 8-10am. So I have my leftover cheese and two squishy white rolls for breakfast, make a pot of plunger coffee (that's the Bodum pots) and then leave the Quest on Johnston at 10:30 after checking the parking meter again. It was a great accommodation. When it swayed the day before yesterday when the storm blew, it was a bit weird. But other than that, it was the best bed I've had so far and everything else was fine. I haven't seen housekeeping for three days though, they only clean on weekdays and I practically only had public holidays here. But I saved 90 dollars for parking because I could park for free on the street due to the public holidays.

Finally, the Old Bank Arcade is open. But it's really small and you're back out in the back after 30-50m. But it has a small upper floor from which you can see the mentioned musical clock. At first, it looks like a clock with a lamp above it. But the lamp is not a lamp, but every full hour, parts fold outwards and inside there are four or five scenes from the life of this bank building, with small figures that even move.

Old Bank Arcade

The musical clock

The building stands on the Plimmers Ark, an old wooden ship that was destroyed here and came to stand on land during the 1855 earthquake. A house was built on the remains of the hull, which served as a storage and shop, and today you can still see remnants of this old ship under a glass floor in the basement.

There are also some things displayed here that have been found. It only surfaced in modern times when this building was constructed. On this lower floor, there are also a few shops, but essentially the small ground floor with about 15 shops is the attraction. Without buying anything, I leave the arcade after 11:00, walk towards the water, sit down for a moment, look around, and then get my car (which now has a fine of 12 dollars for not feeding the parking meter) and drive to the ferry. My ferry leaves at 1:30 pm, but I have to be there at 12:30 pm. I've been wondering what to do with my 40kg luggage for the past 3.5 hours, assuming I have to somehow drag it onto the ship and onto some deck.

After parking in the last parking space before the mini-terminal, I am relieved to see that Bluebridge Ferries checks in the luggage. I am reminded too late of the bottle of rosé wine that I put in my bag. Oh well. If it breaks, I'll just have to wash it.

As a foot passenger, you start the march towards the ferry about 1 hour before departure, and enter it through the car deck and then have to climb 4 decks up steep steel stairs. It's not fun even with a backpack and a day bag. I find a sunny and sheltered spot on the aft deck and enjoy the next three and a half hours of the journey. There's a freezing wind blowing and I change my place several times, read my book, and occasionally enjoy the views of parts of the Marlborough Sounds.

The Marlborough Sounds consist of several fjords. At Picton, my destination today, this is the large Queen Charlotte Sound. Geologically speaking, the Marlborough Sounds are a submerged fold mountain range, while the Maori see them as the remains of a sunken canoe of the gods.

For me, they are beautiful for now, reminiscent of the Swedish archipelago or the Milford Sound. Forested slopes, completely uninhabited hills, small islands, and stretches of coastline, with occasional sailing boats. We arrive in Picton around 5:00 pm.

Just before docking in Picton, we go back down the 4 decks in single file and wait on the car deck for about fifteen minutes in noise and odor until the large cargo hatch in front of us goes down and we can go ashore, while behind us, trucks, cars, and motorcycles start their engines. Now an elderly bus waits as a shuttle to the baggage claim area. The luggage is constantly transported on the ship by a small truck, which loads and unloads it at the terminals and always travels on board - generally the first motorized vehicle to leave the ferry. So we drive for 2 minutes by bus to get around a track to the terminal of Interislander, the competition. After 10 minutes, the luggage arrives there and is unloaded in a small hall. Ultimately, there are at best 40-50 people who had to check in luggage today. Most people can take it with them in their cars. Only Europcar and a few others don't want to do that. Carrying my huge bag onto the bus is only possible with the help of a nice gentleman, because the car rental is another 2 minutes away by bus. Europcar is open. That's good because most other rental companies are closed. When I see a small yellow Mini outside, I suspect something bad. And when I say I need a car with a trunk, they tell me that I booked the smallest class with a manual transmission and no air conditioning. Definitely not!! When Sunny Cars revised the reservation for me in Germany less than a week before my departure, because it said Auckland for every rental period and not Auckland-Wellington / Picton-Picton / Wellington-Auckland, Europcar then made a complete reservation of 42 days from the previous reservation, which they didn't want to make for more than 30 days before. And it suddenly became 700 EUR cheaper than before. I didn't understand that and called the Sunny Cars people, who couldn't explain it either. A look at the vehicle class with internal coding shows that the Picton Europcar guys are actually right, but that's not what I booked, which they see differently because the reservation is for the smallest class, manual transmission instead of automatic, and without air conditioning. That's unimaginable for me for 3 weeks. It gets a bit tricky because this small station doesn't have a particularly large number of cars, but a bit of begging helps and I get another Holden Barina, the same car as on the North Island. However, I am surprised when I have to sign a new rental agreement that once again states a maximum deductible of $3,500. So I ask the woman if - since Europcar unfortunately put 3 cars on me within the 42 days of a rental agreement, since I'm not allowed to take one on the ferry - now I have 3 contracts with a $3,500 deductible each. So if anything breaks on each car, I have a deductible of $10,500. Yes, that's how it is. That makes me wonder how Sunnycars would react in the event of such a claim, as they rent out cars without a deductible, but certainly don't assume a New Zealand deductible of $10,500...

My new car is white and has just over 4,400 km on the clock. I drive for another 2 km and I'm at my Bed & Breakfast. I don't really think the Picton House B&B is great. The room is small and quite Spartan. The shower is practically in the room, there is no bathroom, and the toilet has a window that leads to the entrance to the laundry room, where the light is on all the time. Nice and bright - even at night in the room.

The windows of the room are so high that you can only look out while standing up, and since the hotel is on a slope, I have a view of the grass. Oh well.

I walk a few steps to High Street, down to the small Foreshore Park on the Queen Charlotte Sound. The street has some shops and a Four Square supermarket where I get a bottle of water, because I left that kind of ballast in Wellington.

Picton / Foreshore Park with a view of the Queen Charlotte Sound

Picton

Picton

I sit down in a restaurant with a courtyard paved with pebbles, where you sit at long wooden tables on wooden benches. You order the food inside at the counter, and I decide on the catch of the day, blue cod. Unfortunately, it comes completely breaded after 20 minutes, but it still tastes good. At 8:00 pm, this pub offers karaoke, and apart from the fact that the atmosphere in the pub is terrible, there's also a girl singing who can't sing at all. Since no one is listening and there are only 10 guests present who are all talking to each other, it's not such a wonderful evening entertainment for me, so I leave this hospitable place after a few videos for home, go to my room, upload pictures, and fall into a deep sleep at 11:00 pm.

Daily kilometers: 4km