Thursday, 14May09, Picton to Wellington to New Plymouth

Today was mostly a travel day, we took the InterIslander ferry, from Picton to Wellington, it was a another ‘fine’ day. The Kiwi weather forecast often says ‘fine’ which means fair weather. The ferry ride is quite spectacular, when you leave Picton, the ferry has to negotiate about 30 or 40 kilometers between the islands on the north end of the south island which are very beautiful on such a nice day. We even had a pod of common dolphins come swim along the ferry for a bit. The total distance from Picton to Wellington is around 100 kilometers. We took the 10AM ferry which gets you to Wellington around 1:30PM and we set off for New Plymouth. The drive from Wellington north was scenic, it is darn hard to find any bad scenery in NZ. We are now in New Plymouth, we will do some short treks around here in the AM and then move onto Waikaretu where we hope to do some spelunking on Saturday before we head to the airport.