Day 149: South Island!

Hey everybody who happens to be reading this blog.  I haven't updated it in a while, so I am going to skip ahead a bit to the present time and go back and fill in in between soon, I hope.  I am also going to try and be more succinct, although this is difficult for me, since I had a reader request to make the entries shorter so it's not so much of a time commitment to keep up (or to post, for that matter!) I will do my best.  So, here goes!

Today I took the Bluebridge Ferry with Miniwati and my car Nugget from Wellington at the bottom of the north island, across the Cook Strait to Picton at the top of the south island.  The voyage was a bit longer than 3 hours and although the waves did not look that large (hard to judge when you're on a huge ferry 3 or 4 stories above the water, though) the boat was rocking so it must have been a bit choppy.  Actually, the Cook Strait is known for being windy not nice weather so it's choppy most of the time.

After disembarking the boat, I drove south for about 4 1/2 hours to Christchurch.  The drive down was amazing, with mountains and beaches and beautiful bays hiding around every windy, curvy, hilly corner.  In Christchurch (or Chch) I met up with Jenna, who some of you might know as Pip from camp 2007.  We went to a really great Bible Study at her friend Emma's house and then stayed the night there because Jenna's place is 40 minutes outside of the city and she has to work in town tomorrow.  It's obvious that I am way farther south than I was in Auckland because it's a bit chilly down here closer to the South Pole.  It's still not as cold as it would be in Maine in the middle of the winter but it's definitely cold but warms up a bit during the day. At the start of the day I was thinking it felt like November, maybe Thanksgiving time, but then by midday it was much too warm to be November anymore.  And that's the best temperature approximation I can provide right now.  

Here are some captions for the photos:
1. Sun rising at the ferry wharf in Welly
2. Miniwati on the ferry - we were crusing through the straits that stick up from the top of the south island before we got to Picton, called the Marlborough Sounds

3. SH 1 heading south with beach on the left and a mountain shrouded in cloud straight ahead
4. Mountains!
5. Seals on a rock at Ohau Point
6. Me on a rock, with seals