Posts tagged ‘new zealand’

New Zealand has two islands, and the ferry that crosses between them goes from Wellington (reasonably famous) to Picton (not very famous). Picton’s a touristy sort of place with parking for $2 a day and lots of nice crinkly coastline nearby.

As a result of the coastline, there are a lot of winding roads about, with 50km/h speed limits. Some people liked to sit up my arse as I traversed them. A special place in hell is reserved for these people. Hopefully, they’re stuck behind people like me there, too. Driving presented another challenge when I discovered that New Zealanders give way to right-hand turners when turning left. This at first created many awkward “you go!” “no, you go!” moments. This is nothing though, when you consider the terrible peril we’re in if any New Zealanders come to Australia and assume they have right of way turning right. What? I’m being told New Zealanders can come and go to Australia as they please. What happened to deciding who would come and the manner in which they did it? Madness.

Back to Picton. It’s a big port. It’s also a big tourist destination. Disappointingly, this means the restaurants are often over-priced and not that good. When your main consumer base keeps shifting every year, you can get away with this. If you are in Picton, I hear that Spinnaker is nice. We meant to go there, but never found it, instead opting for a few not completely impressive places. In general though, I never had a steak I didn’t like, so you can be reasonably comfortable ordering them from anywhere. Be warned; some places won’t serve you coffee unless you’re getting food. Tremendously uncivilised. We did however stop in at Alan Scott Winemakers on our Wine Tour and found the food there to be pretty awesome.

Our place of residence was A Sea View B&B. I have no idea why they called it this.

If you like amazing scenery, cooked breakfast every morning, handy local knowledge, and chickens, then A Sea View is the place for you.

The best thing about Picton is the stuff nearby. You can go kayaking, you can drink yourself silly in the Marlborough wine region, you can hike along the Queen Charlotte Track.¹ Our kayaking was with the Marlborough Sounds Adventure Company, who took us around the Kenepuru Sound, which is rather pretty. The day started off relaxing and interesting, but got a little intense at the end when we needed to do a big open sea crossing to get back in time for our co-kayakers to check out of their hotel. Pah!

I’m already getting annoyed by rating towns out of ten, but I’ll do it once more; eight peaceful tourist towns out of ten.

1. There’s more, I’m sure, but we only had four full days. ↩

“If you ever do want to kill yourself, back lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick.”

John Cleese had some unkind things to say about Palmerston North.¹ I can imagine thinking along similar lines if one had to spend a sustained period of time here. However, for a quick trip, it’s not too shabby. There are more lawyers than milk bars² and more flouro tops than you can shake a stick at. It also has power lines under the ground, and a few little oddities.

The main city is arranged in a square. I like neat cities. However, they also just dump their garbage by the road rather than putting it in bins, so this neatness is somewhat undermined.³ Four sheep jokes out of ten.

1. The residents did get some revenge later. ↩
2. Or dairies, as they call them here. This unfortunately means they have to call actual dairies “those places where you squeeze the cow bits to make yummies.” ↩
3. This happens across New Zealand apparently, aside from some of the really big cities. ↩

I could not find the Internet in New Zealand. What will follow over the next day or so are the time-delayed blogs from my travels.

Off to New Zealand! If I find any nice wireless networks then you might even hear from me while I’m there, but otherwise, you won’t, because it’ll cost me $20 per megabyte to use data there. Yeesh.