Adieu Wellington, hello South Island.

Wellington describes itself as the coolest little capital city in the world and it’s not a bad description. Cool must be the most used word here. Our Weta guide used it  in every  sentence. It’s certainly little too. You can walk around the city centre in 10 minutes and it’s no bigger than Brighton and Hove. This is the converse of the UK where the land mass is small but the cities very large. In New Zealand it’s exactly the opposite. The other oddity about Wellington is the number of open air car parks. You can hardly walk  down a street without seeing one. I have no evidence for this but I suspect developers buy up the land and use it as a car park for short term generation of income.

Its’ a fun, funky city but – as with everywhere visited – after 48 hours there you feel you have done it and got the T-shirt.

So at 7-30 the party happily left for the Islander ferry to take us to South Island.

I rather enjoy sea travel. It’s generally peaceful, full of views and picturesque way of entering a new place.

The ferry had a cinema, magic show and restaurants but I was happy to sit in the premium lounge and watch the islands and sea go by. I listened to Mozart off my iPad and did my emails. Relaxing.

The taxi at the arrival town of Picton was not there to greet us. They had the wrong day. No worries.

They had another one and we were soon on our way to the wine estates of Marlborough. We passed the place where they had the earthquake registered at 7.4. Earthquakes are serious in New Zealand. New buildings have to be capable of withstanding 9.00. This one destroyed the road and railway line. We travelled on to Blenheim to a small estate that housed several villas where we were billeted. The main road was straight, carried not much traffic and reminded me of that scene in North by Northwest where Cary Grant is attacked by a seed spray cropper. Many wineries were on this road and we stopped at one – Geesen – for a tasting. I will let Algy do the critique but I enjoyed the Pinot Noirs and Sauvignon Blanc proffered.