South Island with the parents

Hi everyone,

We've been too busy to blog!

We left on Thursday morning for the South Island. We took the ferry from Welly to Picton, and then a bus from Picton to Nelson. We stayed in a beautiful waterfront apartment on Wakefield Quay, and ended up just getting fish and chips from across the street. We just didn't feel like traveling anywhere else!

Friday morning we left took an early bus ride from Nelson to Kaiteriteri for our tour of Abel Tasman National Park. The first part of the day was spent sea kayaking. I felt a bit seasick, but everybody else had a good time. Then we ate our picnic lunches (and had some beer and cake!) and caught the boat up to the seal colony at Onetunga Island. From there we were dropped off at the Quarry Camp for our nature walk. The islands are made of granite, so the sand was tiny pieces of white granite, and there were enormous granite boulders (of all colours) all over the islands. The sea was a gorgeous turquoise blue.

Our walk took us through native bush down to two other beaches. We had time at the end to just lay on the beach and enjoy the scenery, and then we caught a boat cruise back to Kaiteriteri. We connected to our bus, and finally made it back to Nelson about 8pm. We had a drink on our balcony and then had a lovely dinner at a restaurant across the street. It was a fantastic evening.

Yesterday we shopped at the Saturday market before our bus and ferry back to Wellington. We arrived back at home about 6pm and had a big pizza dinner with Nik, Sara, Jakob, and Sam. Afterwards we played Nik's new game (its all finished and launches today!) and then went to bed. Mom and Dad leave in just a few hours, and I'm feeling pretty sad.

A note from mom: Hard to believe it is time to leave already. We really enjoyed our stay on the South Island - absolutely beautiful - a cross between the San Juan Islands and Eastern Washington with lots of green pastures and Douglas Fir (that is what the sign said) on the during the ferry trip through the Queen Charlotte Sound and then miles (or kilmeters) of vineyards with brown hills in the background during the bus trip to Nelson. There were some incredible hairpin curves going up and down the mountains, but our bus drivers seemed to have everything in control. Our stay in Nelson was perfect with a great deck to watch the boats coming and going. We had some of the best fish and chips (even Kevin agreed) for dinner on the deck and wonderful New Zealand wine and beer (yes, Kevin loves NZ beer). The trip to the national forest as Amy described above was great - another full day of beautiful sites with lots of great pictures. Great shopping at the Nelson Market - just wish we had some bigger suitcases with us. We bought Hell's Pizza last night for everyone and then playing Industry - the New Zealand game was fun (bringing home a copy to share - his first sale), especially because I won! The game lasted longer than usual as there were 6 of us playing so Amy did help out a little to let me win to finish the game. This morning we will make one more walk to the grocery store - have we told you that Amy and Rory live on quite a hill - to bring home some chocolate and tim-tams. Will be hard to say good-bye as we have enjoyed every minute here. Will spend the next 1 1/2 days in Auckland and then home on Monday. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

Love,
Amy and Mom