Very early in the morning (seems to be a theme of this trip...) we left our hostel in Wellington to catch a taxi to the ferry terminal. A slightly bumpy start to the day, as we nearly went to the wrong ferry terminal! Somehow and who-knows-why, but there are 2 terminals in the capital city, and we’d managed to book our taxi to the wrong one. Luckily, our driver had shown us the right one on the way into Wellington, so we managed to scream our ride to a halt as we whizzed by the correct one! We’d also received many words of warning that the trip across the Cook Straight (about 3 hours or so) could be amazing to look at, but was often very bumpy! Luckily for us, the weather was beautiful and the wind non-existent on the morning that we left. After watching an on board movie (Jumanji!), we exited to collect our bags, and hop back on the Stray bus for a short journey to Nelson. Nelson isn’t one of the official stops on the coach, but we had heard it was nice to see and we had spare time, so we decided on a few days there before carrying on further south. To be honest, we just spent a lot of our time in Nelson relaxing and regaining energy, ready for the south island! We did, however, manage to fit in a steep, but short, walk to the ‘centre of New Zealand’ (not actually in the centre, as advertised!), luckily on a sunny day. We were treated to a lovely hostel which had amazingly comfortable beds with 3 pillows, and a free breakfast, including waffles and orange juice! So even though we spent our days drinking coffee, walking around and generally relaxing, we enjoyed our time in Nelson and ended up extended our stay to 4 days! Many people stay in Nelson in order to drive to the Abel Tasman national park nearby. We, on the other hand, left behind schedule (due to the bus we were supposed to get on being held up on the Wellington ferry!), to stay over 2 nights at a lodge on the outskirts of the National Park. This was an entirely new bus, and everyone on it was pretty tired due to their early start and delay, so it took us until the night time BBQ to get to know some of the people, as well as our new bus driver, from Scotland! Of course, everyone on the bus was really nice and we accompanied some of them to our activity in the morning. Even though it had forecast rain, we took a leap and signed up for the Water Taxi, which was a short boat ride around the edge of the National Park, during which we saw some fur seals on the rocks! Although it was cold and slightly rainy it was exhilarating to whizz round the edge of the park and see Split Apple Rock, which named describes it perfectly! When it came time to hop off the boat onto shore, I unfortunately timed it wrong and ended up wading through water, soaking my shoes! However, as it had started raining for a short while, it didn’t really matter. The water taxi dropped us off in the National Park, and we completed a scenic 12km walk (not in the rain anymore) back to the lodge. Compared to other walks we’d done in New Zealand so far, this one was relatively flat and easy going, and reminded us a bit of being in the Blue Mountains in Australia! After another early night (I had a cold and it was freezing outside!), we packed up to head to our next destination.

Highlights: The amazing hostel in Nelson, chilling out for a few days, meeting our new bus over a BBQ, the water taxi and enjoyable walk back to the lodge in Abel Tasman.

Accomodation: Bridge Backpackers, Nelson. The Barn, Abel Tasman National Park.