South island Thoughts

November 3

I’m typing this on the Cook Strait.  We’re on a much larger boat today, heading to the North Island. 

As it turns out, the typical way to see New Zealand is to start in Auckland, explore the North Island, take this boat ride to the South Island, and make one’s way to Christchurch. We’re more or less doing the opposite, not only to be contrary, but because the timing worked out better for us given that the dates in Queenstown were fixed. 

The South Island has lots of one way bridges.  One is often instructed to “give way” (not “yield”).  There are roundabouts everywhere and of course driving on the left one traverses them clockwise.  The one we went anti-clockwise on because of construction was quite disorienting, and we were pleased to follow another driver there.  I shouldn’t say construction, I should say “road works,” each iteration of which is concluded by a sign indicating, “works end.” Indeed, there are very few stop signs or traffic lights (other than in Christchurch), so few that we tended to comment on them on the rare occasions we saw either. 

It turns out that Internet access has been spotty.  Only in a couple of places has it been included in our lodging.  Seems that no one in the country offers unlimited data the way we get it in the US.  We were warned at our first lodging that any free internet would be weak (we haven't seen any), and that we should expect to pay (sometimes we have and sometimes we haven't).  

Last night on our 2ish hour drive from Nelson (where we had the surprisingly luxurious accommodations) to Picton, we decided to see what food there was en route since neither of us was hungry enough for dinner when we left Nelson.  We noticed the knife and fork symbol in a small town and were pleasantly rewarded with a harbourside meal in the small town of Havelock (can you think of a more ironically appropriately named location for someone using a GPS?).

This morning we noticed a pub called “The Old Haggis,” though we resisted the urge to enter it.

We’ve been touched and impressed at the number of people at lodgings, restaurants, etc., who have asked us over the past few days about whether we’ve been impacted by Hurricane Sandy.  We politely let them know that we’re from the other coast so we’re fine. 

I think it’s safe to say that we will always remember the South Island, especially the hike at the observatory above Tekapo, Milford Sound, and kayaking at Abel Tasman.