A pitch black start at 620 with a 1.5 hour drive up to Abel Tasmin National Park to start our day out. Garth had booked an aqua taxi from Marahau up to Torrent Bay. The way it worked is that the main building and car park were slightly in land. We all checked in there before a tractor arrived pulling a boat on wheels. We all got onto our boats there and had a shot tractor pull to the sea. We thought the tractors would back us in and drop us off so to speak, but...

We woke early and left quickly (not really knowing where we were) and found a toilet 20km down the road where we went to the loo and brushed our teeth. An hours drive got us to Nelson where we stopped at the info centre for 2hrs to plan our next few days with a little help from the free wifi at the library! We then drove to our camp site for the eve to check the availability before stopping for spaghetti on toast by a river. We took a short drive through town...

We woke at 10am!! After a lovely luxurious sleep!! Garth went down to say good morning to Margaret only to her suddenly remembering she had a funeral to go to and dashed out! We showered, had breakfast and cleaned our the van. We stopped at McDs for wifi them went to Coutdown to do another shop for the next 4 days...$89!!!! It's not cheap!!! London is cheaper!! We then made our way down to Kaikoura which took about 2 hours. We thought the south island might no...

Garth first ferry ride was safe. There was a strong mist in the middle of the strait but it was lovely and sunny on the south island. Garth even bumped into a girl he used to work with in the ferry! Random! We drove to Blenhiem stopping at McDs to check emails and went to Traminer View B&B which is the home of Rose's parents. It was so beautiful. They have a vineyard on their land where the grapes make her niece's wine Lana. They had 3 beautiful rooms with ...

We woke early to drive to Wellington to attended the vineyard there. It proved a little hard to find as Garths phone battery had died but finding its car park took 3 attempts!! However, once there it felt like home from home. Garth knew a couple called Nick and Rose who used to attend SWLV a few years back and now have two gorg boys called Moses and Isaac. They offered us lunch which we gratefully accepted. Church was ace - a guy lead whilst playing drums, we g...