After our one night stop in Kaikoura it was time to say goodbye to the South Island. It was sad to say goodbye to the South as we enjoyed it very much, especially Queenstown. There had been a wealth of things to do and the scenery was fantastic. We also met plenty of great people along the way.

So it was Sunday morning with the usual routine of an early rise, Mark panic packing and a quick room check. At 08:30 we were picked up by the Magic bus to take us to Picton Port for the ferry to Wellington at the Southern tip of the North Island.

On the coach journey to Picton we followed the Pacific coast looking out for dolphins and seals. Funnily enough the road followed the same route as the train line, which would have been our route down to Christchurch on the day of the earthquake. Partway through the journey our driver stopped off so we could walk through a forest to a waterfall to see some seals. We weren't expecting that much.....how wrong we were. After a brisk stroll into the woods we came across 30/40 baby seal pups playing happily by a waterfall. At one point Lisa was about 6 inches away from one of the seals which was sitting on a rock looking a little soppy. One word summed it up; breathtaking.

We then continued on to Picton passing through the Marlborough region, including the "Sound" which is one of the country's most important wine producing regions. We dont mind a bottle or two of Montana Sauvignon Blanc in the UK so it seemed a bit surreal passing the company's winery. We didn't stop here as we needed to check ourselves in at Picton for the ferry.

When we arrived at the port and checked in, Mark slopped off for a couple of minutes. As we boarded Mark took us off in another direction to most of the other passengers. It turns out he had upgraded our seats to premium thereby giving us access to a room with sofas, tv, unlimited wine, beer, soft drinks and tea or coffee as well as a lunch buffet. The use of free wifi was a treat too! It was only £20 extra each so well worth it.

We kicked off our boots and chilled out on the ferry for 3 hours stuffing our faces, reading papers etc and resting on the comfortable sofas. It was so laid back; everyone was just laying on the sofas chillaxing.

Whilst Mark was reading the local paper it mentioned that on Friday 24th September (2 days ago) Tokorua 20Km or so from Rotorua had been hit by an earthquake of 5.1. We couldn't believe it as we were heading up North......via Rotorua. Bad luck or what!!!

The ferry journey went pretty quickly so before we knew it we were back in Wellington. We grabbed a local bus and then a taxi to take us to the YHA hostel; the same one we stayed in three weeks earlier.

When checking in we noticed an offer of a large pizza for NZ$10 we thought it was too good to ignore so we ordered a beef chilli pizza which got delivered at 7pm.

Whilst waiting for the pizza we took a walk to Te Papa Museum to see a few more levels of displays as we ran out of time on our last visit.

We got back to the hostel in time for our pizza.....dinner sorted. It tasted good (plenty of spicy kick) but in the early hours Lisa was yo-yoing to the toilet with an upset stomach. She may as well have slept in the toilet for the night.

We awoke the next day looking forward to catching the bus to Napier.