Two Weeks of Adventure Part 4

Tuesday March 2nd – Thursday March 4. The NZ government was going to announce new COVID Tier Levels to take effect Sunday morning at 6am. We decided to stick to our original schedule, departing the South Island on Thursday. We would then stay on the North Island away from Auckland until the level changed. Tuesday morning we left Queenstown and drove to Christchurch for a night. We walked around that evening and had dinner on New Regent Street which survived the earthquake 10 years ago. The earthquake damage is still visible in much of the city. Wednesday morning we headed to Picton for our ferry on Thursday morning. We stopped at Nin’s Bin a little locally run food stand on the ocean just north of Kaikoura who specialize in local crayfish. Unfortunately they had reached the local harvesting quota so the Crayfish was flown in daily from Fiordland. It was still very good. We also had some green lipped mussels that were good but not as tender as the ones we had in Nelson. Again we drove through a lot of road works. There had been several major rock slips on to the road after a 2017 earthquake that were still under repair. Rock slips are a common occurrence in NZ. We arrived in Picton late afternoon and checked in to the Harbour View Motel. The next morning we loaded onto the Interislander Ferry back to Wellington.

Cromwell, one of the fruit baskets of NZ
Lindass pass lookout
view of the central SI mountains
Lake Tekapo
Lake Tekapo, the blue of the lake is caused by “rock flour”, finely ground particles of rock brought down by the glaciers at the head of the lake and held in suspension in the melt water
Christchurch Cathedral. After years of debate they are going to rebuild.
New Regents Street, Christchurch
New Regents Street
Tunnels through the ocean SH1.
ocean view at Nin’s Bin
Seagull making himself comfortable
more road works
View from motel
Harbour View Motel
Oxley’s for dinner in Picton
our ferry