new zealand [day six]

nawww...he must love us a lot

I'm really struggling to blog about our NZ trip now, I guess I've left my run a bit late, and to make matters worse I just lost a big long blog post all about Day Seven. Now I have to find the motivation to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. But I set my mind to sharing our holiday here (way back when) and I'm determined to finish the job...soon!

OK, so on Day Six we caught the ferry from Wellington across to the South Island. It was a cold but sunny day and the seas were calm (thankfully). The journey took a few hours and was quite enjoyable. What can I say, ferry travel is rather my thing! And in case you are wondering, driving our motor home on and off the boat was a cinch. We parked it deep in the ferry's belly (hull?) where it waited quietly in the company of other motor homes, caravans, semi-trailers and cars. It's a wonder our ferry could float at all with the number of heavy vehicles it carried!

Once in Picton the first thing we did was to locate a Dump station. Yeah, living large in the South Island huh. Emptying the black water tank was not a highlight of our trip, especially for Ben who took charge of this repulsive task. Around NZ there are dump stations a-plenty. New Zealand tourism has really catered well for the motor home traveller, although I've since read that some of us aren't as welcome as you'd imagine and with good reason. Apparently some tourists don't adhere to the free-camping rules, setting themselves up in non-designated locations. But worse still, some motor-homers are too lazy to locate the designated waste disposal spots and dump their you-know-what and goodness-knows-what-else in places that take their fancy. That really makes me cranky, furious in fact. Not only do the rule breakers give us law abiding tourists a bad name, but it also shows a complete disregard for New Zealands precious and pristine environment. Anyway, enough toilet talk for now. Grrrrrr.

The drive from Picton to Nelson was very pretty. The road was windy and progress felt slow in parts, but the picturesque scenery soothed our eagerness, coaxing us to settle in and embrace the leisurely route. We were on holidays after all.

Around midday we stopped at the Havelock Marina. It was here we stumbled upon the Slip Inn and the promise of a mussel feast. It seems I might be the only mussel fan in this family and that's fine with me. You can't imagine how I pine for those mussels - oh boy they were delicious.

Once in Nelson, Ben decided to track us down a yoga studio. The Hot Yoga Nelson Studio offered a hot yoga class. Whilst we practise Bikram yoga, neither Ben nor I had experienced a hot yoga class before so we were very curious. It might be some time before I'll attempt it again. I have never been so hot in all my life. The yoga itself wasn't as challenging as we are used too, but the 40 degree heat nearly did me in. It was suffocating. Surprisingly, Ben (who didn't turn tomato red like me) didn't mind it so much!

Later that evening we drove just a short distance out of Nelson to the Maitai Valley Motor Camp and this is where we bedded down for the night with the sweet sound of a flowing river not to far from our van. Very zen indeed!