Checked in to the 5-star holiday park and then we went for a hot pool session as we always do, but realise this 5-star isn't really as good as the previous 4plus-star; even the toilets have less cubicles (and only 7 minutes of hot water!). Cooked and watched the first episode of LOTR before we turn in for the rather uneventful night.
Even dinner was rather uneventful
Woke up next morning after sunrise to run! 3 of us ran to town (Hanni slept in), did some static exercises by the marina, then took away some breakfast from one of the cafes with 10% discount.
Rewarding run with even more rewarding morning scenes...
Something about the mystical morning fog that I absolutely love
A calm harbour is pretty soothing on the mind as well. Precisely why we took on this trip: to recharge before the next phase in life!
Ok one last one featuring model Tan in his sexy tights
Breakfast was really good, especially the cinnamon porridge and French toast.
Yumz. Reward ourselves after a morning jog. And banana skin should never be mixed in other edible food!
Played some rugby passing after breakfast and then spent some time to clean up our van before we head out.
Kids
And this happened
Took the windy road down Queen Charlotte Drive and eventually trekked the 45-min route to the Davis Bay (3-4day treks are also available!).
And found a nice place to chill in the middle of nowhere
Scenery was only okay so we didn't stay for long.
Leggo!
The view point we worked so hard towards (and sacrificed my flyknits, sort of) was pretty meh except for the fun we had trying to standing board jump across this flooded bank haha
Headed back down the windy road to our accommodation, parked our van and walked to town for lunch. Food was really expensive in town except this fish and chip place, so qingying and I got a seafood box, as with the other pair and we each got another sides, but the portions are so huge we didn't manage to finish it! So we took some of the fries away and got to the supermarket for some grocery shopping.
Seafood cravings satisfied!
Came back to camp after groceries to do laundry, and watched The Break-Up while waiting (Borat was too boring). Had a throbbing headache so I went to bed soon after. Woke up at a few intervals to find that Zongrui and Hanni were still talking, gave up eventually at 5am to not sleep and just use my phone. "Woke up" eventually at about 630 and Zongrui and I decided to whip out some breakfast before we rush for our cruise. Cleared our waste and accidentally took a communal plate (oops) from the campsite before we headed to the ferry terminal. Lo and behold, the timing was changed again (first time was last night when they emailed to say it's brought forward half an hour), this time to 2pm in the afternoon! So this was 8am, and we have 6 hours out of nowhere. Though sleepless, we still decided to be adventurous, so we took the time to go back a little to Marlborough's winery center: Blenheim (though we know all the vineyards are just barren land as all the grapes have been harvested and whatever leaves remain have withered away). Visited a nice winery but they weren't open so we headed to the iSite.
Empty winery that looks super charming. Like Jay Chou's MV kind of charming
The barren wineyard was pretty quaint too... Wanted to run over to take some swag shot of me walking back but the running over turned out to be more swaggy so tada! Haha
Got introduced to the Makana chocolate factory where we bought a packet of chocolate, and then we headed to one of the TripAdvisor recommended cafe for brunch; and NZ brunch impressed once again.
Caramel brittles!
Lunch was some lamb burger that was cooked to perfection. Mmm..
Headed back to Picton and waited for our cruise for slightly more than an hour before we finally got onboard.
The wait. Was even more compacted when we eventually got on the cruise
Boy from the NZ OBS we met in the morning found us and stuck around rather annoyingly but all is well when we decided to head to the bar, which he's not allowed in being an underage and his teachers are inside. Chilled abit and raided their cafe towards the end cos they gave us $15 voucher each for the delay this morning and we weren't hungry enough to eat so took away lots of cookies and snacks with us.
Onward we go; bye bye, South Island! Also, we shared this cruise with quite a number of cows and sheeps lol
Landed 4 hours later and after a tormenting hour worth of traffic jam in the main city's peak hour traffic, we reached our destination: a carpark!
