Day 159, 160, 161 -Havelock, The Queen Charlotte Sounds and Picton, South Island -Friday 23rd, Saturday 24th, Sunday 25th March 2012

We arrived in Havelock to glorious sun and parked up for a quick walk around the town. Havelock is really just a port town and very small, the main business seems to be its fishing industry and the catching of Green Shelled Mussels. Apparently it's the Green Shelled Mussel capital of the world, as the local sign stated on the drive in!! Anyway the town is really just a small high street consisting of a small supermarket, bakery, post office, church and the usually other little shops. We popped into the village information centre to enquire about where the local campsites were, he directed us round the corner and we booked a non-powered site and parked up. As the weather was so good we headed to the pub for a drink. Obviously being that we are in New Zealand and always want to try everything that is kiwi, so we found ourselves in the only pub in town - "Paddy O'Reillys" (or something like that) - real traditional hey!! Anyway after 2 pints of the black stuff for me and a margarita for Soph, we headed back to our campsite that just happened to be right behind the pub. The sun was still out so we grabbed a bottle of wine that we still had from one of the winery's we'd visited, our books and sat on the grass and chilled in the rarely (rarely for us) NZ sun. Soph wanted to try the famous green shelled mussels and I fancied some lamb so that evening we headed to the Slip Inn restaurant. The restaurant was really nice and right on the side of the port. I had a local beer and Soph tried the locally produced pinot gris (which she pronounces Pinot greasey!! Haha). We shared a mussel platter for starters which was an assortment of 12 different mussels - lovely. Then Soph had the green shelled mussel chowder and I had the lamb. With dinner done and feeling a tad tipsy we went back to the camper where we tried to connect to someone's internet for free - we failed and went to sleep!

Freezing cold, grey and wet - and I'm not just talking about my pants!! Today was one of the most miserable days since being in NZ. I think Soph has written this before but you always seem to get one awesome day followed by three wet ones!! We really do seem to have no luck with the rain; well that or we stupidly believed that the weather would be pretty hot. Anyway seeing as the weather was so bad we decided to eat breakfast and get on the road to Picton. Picton is where the ferry leaves for the North Island and is really just a one day stop to do just that. We chose to drive into Picton along the Queen Charlotte Drive; this is, again, supposed to be one of the most attractive and scenic drives in the whole of the South Island. The scenery was really nice and the winding roads and lush greenery were awesome but the view out across the mountains was not great due to all the rain and low clouds. But to keep us interested and keep our eyes on the road, we were in the middle of a cycle race. This race was going in the opposite direction, up and down all the winding hills - they all looked knackered. Some of the cyclists looked pretty professional with all the gear on and some were on tandem bikes just having fun. The thing was, that there we hundreds of them all the way into Picton so the roads were pretty blocked up with cars trying to overtake the cyclists and on some of the blind windy bends - crazy!! We finally arrived in Picton and unfortunately it was still pretty miserable, so Soph referred to the campsite book and found a campsite back on Queen Charlotte Drive overlooking a bay, when we got there it looked really nice - hopefully it will be clear tomorrow so we get to appreciate the views!

Morning came and we were relieved to find the sun gracing our lives again! The mornings drive down the Queen Charlotte Drive was infinitely better in the sun and we took our time and looked out at the many viewpoints. We finally arrived into Picton and headed straight to the ferry interislander check in and waited board the ferry in our camper. After an hour or so we were on board and so headed to the chairs with the front viewing and spent most of the three and a half hour trip there.

Once off the ferry and into Wellington we headed for a hostel in the hills and not far from the main centre of the city. They offered a non-powered site for $30 which we thought didn't seem too bad. Once we arrived we realised why it was cheap - it was basically a car parking space out the back of the very tired and shabby looking hostel. Oh well we thought, it was just somewhere to park up and rest our heads plus it was easy to walk into town and so we decided to stay two nights so we could have the whole of the next day to explore Wellington city. With that in mind we settled down and did some planning for the next two weeks left in the North Island.