On the way to Picton... the last few days on the South Island

Dunedin - Christchurch

For us, it was back to Christchurch from Dunedin because we have to make it to Picton by January 17th, as that's where our ferry departs for Wellington on the North Island of New Zealand. So the next few days are all about long, long drives. Today it's 6 hours. On the way to Christchurch, we made a stop at the Moeraki Boulders, but since we didn't have the best weather, the pictures in the travel guide look much better than ours.

In Christchurch, we spent the night again at Jucy Snooze, the hostel where we also stayed on our first night in New Zealand. But this time, we didn't treat ourselves to the luxury of a bed, instead, we slept in the parking lot. Since we had already seen Christchurch at the beginning of our trip to New Zealand and it wasn't really exciting, we decided to go to the movies.

Apparently, all of Christchurch had the same idea, because almost all of the movies were sold out. We ended up watching the new film with Will Smith - you can watch it, but you don't have to. But it's cool to realize that we now have no trouble watching an English film. So our understanding of English has definitely improved a lot here.

Christchurch - Nelson

Due to the road between Christchurch and Picton being damaged last year because of the earthquake, we have to take a huge detour that almost takes us to the west coast. Since we don't want to spend more than 6 hours a day in the car, we divided the drive to Picton and drove to Nelson. It's also located in the far north and from there it's not far to Picton. Nevertheless, we still had a 6-hour drive ahead of us... yippee. In Nelson, we met up with Gila, a friend of mine who I met while dancing.

It was just so nice to meet someone from "home" (someone you actually know, there are plenty of Germans here) and exchange experiences. She's here for a few months for work&travel but has had a lot of difficulties finding a job here. Sometimes I wondered if I'm missing out on something because we're just traveling around, but after hearing her stories, I'm pretty happy with how our trip is going! We (typically German) had coffee together and had dinner at our campsite.

We also found a really beautiful campsite in the middle of the woods! All in all, it was a great day!

Nelson - Picton

Today, we finally headed to Picton. The drive only took 2 hours, so we still had a lot of the day left. Gila recommended a hostel located right next to a cemetery (and next to our ferry terminal) and we were lucky enough to get the last two spots.

Although we're only staying in a caravan, we have a real bed and it's super cheap! It somehow feels like home here, everything is very clean, and we feel very comfortable, and there are only Germans here... For the past 2 or 3 days, we've had really good weather here (yes, since we have to spend 6 hours a day in the car and the highlights of the South Island are behind us^^), so after briefly exploring the city and going for a little walk, I just lay down in the garden, soaked up the sun, got a tan, and read a book!

I haven't done that since last year in Australia... so nice. I'm actually getting a tan here in New Zealand xD. Now I'm just hoping that we can bring the good weather to the North Island! After all, we really deserve it now.