Day 16 Blenheim

Thanks for all the kind posts about the blog, we hope we’re not wasting too much of your time as we certainly are enjoying ours.  Sadly the car in the Napier pictures is not our hire car – we are driving around in something that looks like this little picture but it works OK so that is the main thing.  

Today we had an early start as we caught a ferry at 8:30 from the harbour to Picton on the South Island.  The weather was glorious, it reached 27 degrees with hardly a cloud in the sky.  The first picture was a seaward view of Oriental Bay where we swam yesterday and here are some other pictures as we leave the beautiful Wellington harbour, there was hardly a ripple on the sea as you can appreciate from the reflections.  We crossed Cook Straights very serenely, it is quite narrow and you don’t lose sight of land.  Then the approach to Picton is between picturesque islands and a sliver of the mainland.

When we arrived at Picton we picked up another car and had a spot of lunch before driving the Queen Charlotte Drive (who was Queen Charlotte?).  This too was very scenic full of little sandy bays with lush vegetation all around.

 We eventually arrived at our very nice lodgings in Blenheim and went for a walk into town, had a look round, visited this little park and enjoyed a Chinese meal before walking back for some rest.