Day 12: Boot to south island

13 november

In the morning we walked around in Wellington and did some shopping. Did the tourist thing by taking the cable train up (and down again). The view was nice, but nothing spectacular. We also went to the te papa museum.

Around 12:30 we got back at the hotel and the shuttle busses came to pick us up and bring us to the boot. We left our original driver and bus behind and got a new driver and bus on the southern island. Arriving at the port, our boot has an enormous delay and we are offered the faster Lynx boat without extra costs. Since the regular boot would arrive at 21:00 on the southern island we take the fast boat: the Lynx. This keeps us pretty much on schedule. Normally taking the Lynx would have cost more, but due to the delays the shipping company also benefited from putting people on the fast boat so that is why they did it.

Around 17:45 we reach shore again and pick up our luggage. The new bus is a bit longer and more comfortable than the old bus. The bus brought us from Pictim (harbor where the boat arrived) to Nelson. We reached it around 19:30. The hotel is stationed above a very WRONG family restaurant, but as we didn't have to eat there that wasn't much of a problem. However they do manage to screw up the reservations so we do a bit of reshuffle to put everybody into a room.

We had dinner somewhere else than the hotel, it was nice but most of all it was a lot.