Final Trip - Day 2: Ferry to South Island

We had to wake up at 6:30 so that we could get ready and check out of the hostel in time to catch the shuttle bus to the ferry. Unfortunately, our hostel told us the wrong time that we needed to be at the shuttle stop, so we wound up waiting for about a half hour that could have been extra sleep time. There were these 3 Asian men on the shuttle who were clearly tourists and they were wearing these funny hats. They said “New Zealand” and had sparkly sequins on them! We were all joking around and saying how we should all buy one and wear them back at Loyola.

At the ferry, we had to check our luggage as if we were going on a plane. The InterIslander ferry was very large – like a small cruise ship. There were 10 different levels. The bottom ones were for the cargo and the cars and the upper levels were for passengers.

We got breakfast at the café and then settled down in the “reclining lounge” where we took much needed naps. Here's Rich and Dana in the recliners:The ferry ride was about 3 hours. As we got closer and could see land, Dana and I went up to walk around the sundeck and take some photos.

The town of Picton, where the ferry came in to:

Once we got to Picton, we got our luggage off a conveyor belt (again, like at an airport). We went to the car rental office, but it the service was REALLY slow. There was only one woman working there, and there were two other people ahead of us in line. We waited for close to a half hour, and then when she finally got to us, we gave her all of our info. But at the last step, she messed something up in the computer so we had to start all over again giving our address, license number, etc. When we finally got the cars, we had 2 Toyotas: Brian drove the minivan and I drove the Camry. We were all really hungry and stopped at Subway for lunch on our way out of town.

My car made an obnoxious beeping noise if I drove over 110 kph (the speed limit was 100 kph), which was annoying but also good, because I made sure that I didn’t speed. (A couple of weeks ago, I got a speeding ticket in the mail from our first trip to the South Island. Apparently I was caught on a hidden camera going 11 kph over the speed limit. Don’t want another ticket!) It took a little over 2 hours to drive to Kaikoura. It was a pretty drive though, through the Marlborough Wine Region, and then along the coast. We stopped at one point to take some pictures of seals lounging on the rocks. It was really nice out at first, but as we continued on, it got cloudy and started to rain. It was kind of an eerie scene with the storm clouds, the fog, the rain, the mountains and the rough water.

We arrived at our hostel, “The Albatross,” and found out that we were all staying in one room that had a Turkish theme. Some of the beds had curtains and little cutouts to enter them. I stayed in the section of the room that was not Turkish themed, and I just had a regular bunk bed. Since it was nasty weather, we decided to take a trip to the grocery store, and just cook dinner and hang out at the hostel for the night. We split up into 2 dinner groups: the pasta group and the “fiesta” group. I was in on the fiesta and we made a delicious meal of chicken fajitas with peppers, onions, homemade guacamole, cheese, rice, chips and salsa. There were only 4 other people staying in the hostel that night, so we had the whole common area to ourselves. There was a woodburning stove and couches and we all sat around and watched the All-Blacks (the national rugby team) play their first test match of the season. This match was against Ireland and next weekend we are going to go see the All-Blacks play against England. I really enjoyed all of us sitting around watching the game together, especially since I got a better feel for rugby and can now enjoy next week’s game even more! It was a very fun and cozy night and went perfect with the weather. (It even snowed for a bit that night!)