Ferry Ride to Picton, South Island

Along with her brilliant Contra Dance plan, Mom had the great idea of taking the ferry from Wellington to Picton while she was here. I had vaguely thought that that was something I'd do "one day" and not thought any more about it, but when we looked it up, it sounded pretty fantastic! It's a three hour ferry ride that goes across Wellington Harbour, over the Cook Straight to the South Island, where you pass through the Marlborough Sounds, the Tory Channel, and the Queen Charlotte Sound. We read about all of this online, complete with a quote from "Wine Spectator" (which is apparently a magazine) that said it was one of the most beautiful ferry rides in the world. Well, how do you turn that down?

We then excitedly invited J to come along, and got shockingly far into the ensuing conversation before any of us remembered that J gets horribly seasick and should definitely not embark on a three hour ferry ride. Darn. So we bought two tickets for the weekend and crossed our fingers that the fairly constant rain that had fallen since Mom arrived would take a break for our trip. And it did! We had absolutely perfect weather for the entire trip, for which we are so thankful.

I took almost 200 pictures throughout the weekend, and Mom helped me perform a major cull, leaving me with the more approachable number of 29. It's just hard when each cove, island, bay, hill, etc. has its very own unique beauty and charm. I often have to remind myself that since the majority of the country looks like a postcard, I am obligated to develop more discerning taste or risk overloading my computer with pictures.

Anyway, here are a select few of my pictures of the ferry crossing - some from the way there on Saturday, and some from the way back on Sunday. I will do a separate post to share our activities in Picton in the intervening time.

This is in the Wellington Harbour, with Miramar on the right in the foreground, which we will go around to head out into the Cook Straight.

And this is looking back towards Wellington centre city, curving around the harbour.

This is the structure that holds up the life boat, that Mom thought looked like a dog, and I thought looked like a brontosaurus. Either way, it is very cool, and nice of it to hold up the lifeboat, which can't be light!

This rocky promontory was the first part of the South Island we saw up close. In all the time we've lived in NZ, I have never been to the South Island, so this was special for me. And what a beautiful introduction!

Because we were lucky enough to go on such a clear day, we were able to see the mountain in the distance. From what I can put together from maps, I think that mountain is Tapuae-O-Uenuku, which means "Footprint of the Rainbow."

I absolutely love this kind of landscape! And notice the multitude of white specks, which are only a small portion of the amazingly huge flock of seagulls hanging out in this particular spot.

We loved watching the landscape unfold as we came around curves like this one. You never knew what would be behind the next curve, except that it would be stunning!

I realize that this is a pretty darn underwhelming picture, but you get it anyway, because once you know that that brown slit is, in fact, the flipper of a kekeno (fur seal) that was waving to use as we sailed along, it becomes much better (cognitively, not visually). In real life, we could see the kekeno clearly, as it languidly turned and floated and relaxed in the water, every so often lazily waving a flipper at us, much to our delight.

We saw several flocks of sailboats, like much larger versions of our seagull friends.

Mom did a wonderful cruise through Alaska with Paul (her grandson, my nephew) and she said many of the views here, including this one, were very similar. Makes me want to do the Alaskan cruise someday!

This particular hillside was one of our favourites, because it looks like a spined lizard, maybe even a tuatara (NZ's native lizard), sunning itself. Can you see it? The head is up to the left, and the tree "spines" end just before the end of the tail in the bottom right. As is to be expected, the resemblance is not as striking in the photo as it was in real life, but it's still pretty good, I think.

Coming next week: our exploration in the charming little town of Picton.