Journey to Blenheim

We woke up in Jamie and Kerry’s lovely home (Monday 13th.) Jamie was already off to work so we went for brunch with Kerry to the Spruce Goose, a lovely café that she chose for us near the airport. New Zealand has an excellent café culture. A New Zealand Air Force Boeing 757 landed at the airport when we were having our coffee; perhaps it was transporting the new Prime Minister of New Zealand, Chris Hipkins. 

We then borrowed Jamie’s car and made our way to the Interislander Ferry Terminal, to embark on a trip to the Marlborough area while Jamie and Kerry are working this week. We had originally planned to go north to Hawkes Bay but sadly it has been devastated by the cyclone.

This is where things got complicated. We had rather optimistically assumed that we would be able to get onto one of today’s ferries even if we had to wait in the “stand-by” queue. How wrong we were! The ferries were extremely busy and there was no stand-by list; I suppose that we weren’t the only people who had decided to head south from Wellington instead of north due to the cyclone. We managed to book onto the 1 p.m. ferry as foot passengers and Kerry very kindly came to the ferry terminal to collect the car! But when we got to Picton (after a pleasant three hour ferry trip) we could not find any taxis or buses to our accommodation in Blenheim. We also noticed three very upset young British girls who had just been turned away from a bus to Abel Tasman because it was full. They had been waiting all day after not managing to get on the morning bus. We were able to do a good deed by helping them out with accommodation, which made me feel very happy. We then managed to contact a taxi, and ended up giving a lift to a young Austrian couple who also needed to get to Blenheim. The taxi driver was called Andrea and was very lovely, we all had a good chat.

How glad we were finally to arrive at our hotel for the next few nights, the Château Marlborough. It’s certainly not a chateau, but it is smart and comfortable. 

* Update - We have been very lucky to get here at all because the next day all of the Interislander ferries were cancelled as the bad weather moved south.