Day 41 - Through the Marlborough Sounds to the North Island

24.01.2015

After 21 days saying goodbye to the South Island...

Today marks one year since my first trip to New Zealand began in Christchurch. I landed there at night and rented a car on January 24th, with which I traveled almost 2,500km for 8 days on the South Island.

The alarm wakes me up at 4:30 am from a restless sleep. I gather my things, stuff the last items in my bag, and then try to leave the hotel. Unfortunately, all the doors are locked and my key doesn't fit. I stand in front of the main entrance door and it doesn't open. I wander through the dark hotel, find a back exit, stumble upon a hedgehog in the grass, and realize that my path ends at a locked gate around the garden. Back into the hotel. Somewhere there is an emergency exit above a curtain. Behind it are cleaning utensils and a washing machine. I try there, and when I have pulled out a bolt at the top of the door, I can finally leave the house. Once again, I am grateful for my flashlight app, without which I wouldn't have found my way out. I'm already short on time and I can't afford this kind of mess today. So I get in the car and drive the 4 minutes to the car rental agency. Park the car, take everything out of the box, and carry the heavy bag, backpack, and a bag to Europcar. The ferry terminal is 50m away and it's somehow completely dark. It's 5:15 am and it's already completely dark in Picton. I wonder if I made a wrong reservation, but I find someone who says it's about to start. So I leave my luggage in the terminal, walk to Europcar, and now want to drop off the key, which I preferred to keep, just in case the ferry doesn't work out. Now at the mailbox slot for the car keys, it says not to park the cars in the company's parking lot, but in a 60-minute parking lot in front of the office door. So I trudge back to the Europcar parking lot, get my car, and drive it around aimlessly until I park it correctly again.

Check in luggage, check in myself, and then tiredly wait for departure. The advantage of Interislander is that their terminal is right next to the car rental agencies and you board Deck 7 through a finger. With Bluebridge Ferries, which I arrived on, you had to walk on foot across the car deck and then haul everything up 4 decks until you were in the passenger area. In the end, you stood on the car deck for 20 minutes and waited for the ramp to go down. That's better with Interislander. However, the ship has few exterior areas and is poorly maintained. But I don't care. There is a dreamy sunrise in the Marlborough Sounds and after an hour, this beautiful part of the South Island is behind me.

I get some tea and a sandwich and answer some emails. We dock in Wellington at 9:30 am with bright sunshine. Another advantage of Interislander is that their terminal is also where the car rental agencies are located, so I don't have to hassle with my luggage from the Bluebridge Ferry Terminal to here. My favorite mumbling lady from Europcar is working again today, and I'm about to lose my patience because she continues to mumble unintelligibly. It turns out that my reservation was actually made for a manual transmission car. Not by me, that's for sure. But it was the case that on the last stretch, the Europcar reservation became 700 EUR cheaper and Sunny Cars couldn't tell me why either. I understand now, because they changed the entire car class. With some whining, I save myself 75 dollars for a 5-day surcharge for an automatic car and get a Ford Focus from Mumble Lady. As I pack up my papers, the next well-English-speaking tourists are already trying to make a rental agreement with Mumble Lady and they can't understand her either. That calms me down a bit. I just wonder why they keep this lady in such a position. And she must be completely annoyed too because she always has to say everything 3 times. Maybe she has a speech defect or speaks a southern New Zealand dialect spoken by the dwarves behind the seven mountains. No idea.

I'm sitting in my sporty car and after 60km I already see the fuel gauge moving. What a gas guzzler this thing is. After 277 km, I fill up and put almost 26 liters in the car. At an average speed of 56 km/h through the miserable curves, does it consume 10 liters per 100 km? I'm glad I'll only be using it for 4.5 days and that gasoline prices are currently historically low. I fill up at a gas station where a liter of 91 octane (regular gasoline) costs 1.61 NZ dollars. The most expensive I've ever paid for gasoline at the beginning of the trip was 2.06 NZ dollars!

I stop in Masterton. I wanted to visit the Woolshed there to witness sheep shearing. I read about it in a brochure. When I arrive at the extremely well-made, small museum, they're not doing it though. But two old gentlemen, who are sheep farmers themselves, are running the museum today and I chat with them.

Masterton is the venue for a kind of world championship of sheep shearing at the beginning of March each year. There are several elimination rounds, and in the last one, the finalists have to shear 20 sheep. There is a documentary film of the event from 2008, it's incredible how quickly they shear the sheep there. The museum is also very interesting overall. With many old sheep shearing items and old razors. There are also many different breeds of sheep with many different types of wool on display. Some look like long white hair, others like little worms.

One of the two gentlemen explains that there are between 1 and at best 6 shearings per year. Merino sheep are only sheared once a year. No wonder wool is so expensive and sheep are so rare. That is actually a low output. Because a sheep gives off between 4 and 6 kg of wool per shearing.

One of these top shearers gets 2 dollars per sheep and the good ones can shear 150-200 sheep a day in normal operation. That's why these expert shearers remain unaffordable for many sheep farmers, because at 400 dollars per day for just one shearer, the income from the wool is practically gone.

So often they shear the sheep themselves or with cheaper, not so fast shearers. Often they still shear by hand with shears. I squeeze such shears together four times, then my hand gets weak.

Most of the New Zealand wool is exported. About 80%. Most of it goes to Italy and China. There are now about 30 million sheep in NZ. The larger herds are indeed around 10,000 animals strong. But since you get more from cattle farming because you get significantly more money for milk than for wool every few months, and the use of cattle for meat and milk is more profitable than sheep, you can now clearly see that cattle farming is on the rise.

I leave at half past 1 and arrive in Napier at 5:30 pm after a drive with fewer curves than before, through gentle hilly land.

My motel has the charm of the 70s and the prices of 2015. 130 dollars for really nothing special. Well.

I immediately head out again in search of the many Art Deco buildings and a Saturday atmosphere among the population. And I realize: Napier and I won't be friends. The Art Deco buildings can be seen, but often they are simply spoiled by advertisements or ugly shops downstairs and only the upper floors are still beautiful.

In Napier, there was a severe earthquake in the early 1930s, which destroyed large parts of the city. One year later, many houses were rebuilt in this beautiful Art Deco style, and Napier is considered a worldwide exception in terms of the number and cohesiveness of the Art Deco buildings.

Napier

However, I also find many beautiful Victorian wooden houses on the slopes of the city. The city center is completely deserted and it's just boring. Of course, it's nice to see the Pacific Ocean again and there are still people out in the evening sun. But there are no restaurants or pubs by the water (at best separated by a multi-lane road and a park from the water) and I give up after a detour to Bluff Hill Outlook.

The view of the harbor facilities - the view of the city is nicely obscured by bushes - is nothing beautiful and a complete waste of time. I walk a bit through the deserted streets of the city center and then find an affordable rice dish at a Thai restaurant and sit there quite nicely.

Napier

I'm back at the hotel at 8:00 pm and quickly wash my two hiking pants, when I remember that my other (dry) pants are in the trunk. So either the pants will be dry in the morning, or I'll have to go to the parking lot in my underwear...

Write in my diary and sort pictures, which doesn't take up much time today.

I've given up on the plan to stay here for another night, and I just booked three nights in Taupo. Tomorrow is Sunday. On Wednesday, I'll be driving from Taupo a pretty long distance to Auckland. Otherwise, the driving is manageable now.

Daily kilometers: 362km