Kaikoura to Nelson

On Friday 27th April I got collected from my hotel by the Kiwi Experience bus. Our first stop for the day was Ohau Point Seal Colony where we saw quite a few seals. We did not stop long here however as it was raining. We then continued through to Picton where we dropped of those who were flying or getting the ferry to the north island.

After leaving Picton we stopped off at The Village for some wine tasting. The wine was okay but still not as good as the ones Wayde and I tasted in Australia - think it is going to be difficult to beat them! Thankfully the mist cleared a bit as we headed towards Nelson and we got some good views of the hills.

In Nelson we were staying at Fern Lodge, only the Kiwi bus stays here. The hostel seemed really lovely when we first arrived but later on that night there were a lot of unhappy guests! Our fire alarms went off at midnight for about 10mins even though there was no fire. Those of us in my room had left our room and closed the door before realising nobody had their keys with them. We were not able to get hold of any of the managers or our guide and so ended up sleeping in the lounge. An hour later and the fire alarm went off again. This time we called the fire brigade as we were unable to get hold of anyone. They came round and broke into our room for us but were unable to do anything about the alarm. A couple of hours later the alarms went off again and continued this for quite some time before we all unplugged the alarms. So we never got much sleep that night.

On Saturday morning I headed to the markets with Lauren. Unfortunately due to the bad weather not many of the stalls were there and so it wasn't that great. On the way back to the hostel I bumped into Andrea and James, a couple who I shared a room with in Melbourne. Such a small world! In the afternoon Stan and I went to the Jens Hansen Jewellers. Jens Hansen was the jeweller who designed the Lord of The Rings ring and so we went to see the originals!

After seeing the rings we then headed up to the central point of NZ. This is the point which is equal distance from the northern and southern most points of NZ. Thankfully again the weather had cleared for us and we got quite good views of Nelson.

On Sunday Lauren and I went up to Abel Tasman National Park but I will put up another post for it as I have lots of photos for that day.

On Monday I went for a 1.5hour walk in the Grampians Reserve, just behind Nelson. It was a lovely walk up and down some hills and I got yet more photos of Nelson! In the afternoon I didn't do much other than plan some of my travels and up-date my blog as the weather was quite rubbish.

Then on Tuesday it was back on the Kiwi bus again.