Days 146 & 147

Day 146 - Leaving Kaikoura!

Today is a big day, we are leaving Kaikoura where we have been living for the past 3 months! We woke up early to finish packing and do some final cleaning before leaving our house. With our packs on our backs again we headed down to meet the Stray bus to continue our journey. John has been working on getting Andrea to be early for things... so we got to the bus at 8:15am and it didn't leave until 9:30am! Ok, so the bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30am ;).














Along the drive we stopped by the waterfall just outside of town to see the baby seals. We have been here before to see the seals, but it was fun to see them again. They are too cute!














As we continued along our drive north towards Picton, we passed a large crayfish... so while John mourned the death of Michael Jackson and protected himself from swine flu, he posed for a picture. Many New Zealand towns have their "claim to fame" and then make a very large sculpture of that. Naturally, just outside of Kaikoura there is a large crayfish, you might have seen some of the other large objects in previous posts.














Then we arrived in Picton and checked into our backpackers before heading out on a walk along the harbour. It was a beautiful day so we were out enjoying it.














Andrea made some friends...




















then we headed to the grocery store and went back to our backpackers to take a nap, it has been a long day!

We got up and went in the spa pool, had some dinner and free hot chocolate pudding and ice cream, YUM! Then relaxed a bit more and went back to bed.

Day 147

The morning started off slowly as it was raining outside and we had the morning to ourselves before meeting the next bus. After cleaning up we headed out to the spot we were meeting the next Stray bus. While watching them pull up, we were a bit worried about the state of the bus we were traveling in as it jerked forward and was making a lot of noise. We drove a little bit down the street and then had to unload the bus and go get some lunch while we waited for another bus to come and pick us up.

We were in Picton hanging out for another couple of hours before the bus came to get us and we headed west towards Abel Tasman National Park. It was nice to get moving again.

We stopped in Motueka to go to the grocery store, and then finally arrived in Marahau (just outside Abel Tasman National Park). We cooked some pasta and played cribbage before heading to bed.