South Island Tour Day 4 4th January 2015

The majority of today was spent looking around Nelson knocking off things in Wendy's book.

The museum had some interesting exhibits especially the World War 1 exhibit, which reminded me of the history of how the war actually began. My daughter would be able to give me a good account of it too.

The majority of the museum was on how Nelson played its part in the formation of New Zealand as a country. The museum was not free. I think it was a $5 entry fee.











We had a look at the South Street houses, which have been lovingly restored and are still lived in or used for accommodation. Walked up to the cathedral and looked inside. We then went for a stroll along Tahunanui beach. At the time they were setting up for a national volleyball competition. We spoke to this man who seemed to be involved with it and new his stuff. He gave us the low down on how their local team always does well and that Waikato has some pretty good teams too.

Wendy had enough of having yucky feeling hair and washed it under one of the public showers used to get sand off you after a day at the beach.

We then headed up to Kaiteriteri beach. Along the way we stopped to feed some tame eels near Tasman

Kaiteriteri beach has an awesome sand colour and the water was great. We were warned that it could be pretty busy but even though it was the busy season we still managed to find a park on the waterfront and stay for about an hour and have a swim.

Earlier in the day I had txt some friends who were traveling the South Island as well and we knew they were somewhere near here. We found them in Motueka Motorcamp so we headed back there to have dinner and an evening with them before heading back to Wakefield and our camp site.

South Island Tour Day 3 3rd January 2015

It was up at 6am for this day to begin. We had a ferry to catch that was leaving at 8.30. We quietly sneaked out of and headed for the ferry terminal.

This picture was taken before we left. Their house overlooks some of Upper Hutt. Up in the hills . Beautiful.










The ferry crossing was excellent but full. For some reason we decided to stay seated in the same place instead of taking a tour of our ship. We shared some food purchased from the cafe, which was actually more reasonable then we had thought, read  and conversed. The trip was set for 3.15mins and was almost to the dot. It actually went really quickly.

Once we landed at Piction we walked along the waterfront for a while and then took the guided tour of the Edwin Fox. The Edwin Fox is the 6th oldest ship in existence today. This took me by surprise but ships like the Mary Rose or the Cutty Sark in England are two older ships but there are actually not that many left that have not been destroyed or lost. When you first see it you think, "It doesn't look much like a ship, but once you get up close and personal you get let your imagination dictate what it would have been like. The Edwin Fox is not set up as a restoration programme but rather a preservation. What I liked most about it was that you can get right inside it and walk on the actual planks, touch the beams and create. The movie in the museum part is worth watching while you wait for the tour. It describes how it came to be where it is today.

It finished its working career as a refrigeration storage for meat carcasses waiting to be shipped to England.

 It was used for many things during the course of its life. It was used to transport criminals to Australia. It was also used during the Crimean war to transport sick and wounded soldiers.
















Our next stop was Nelson. We discovered a free camping ground just South of Nelson in Wakefield called the Edward Baigent Reserve. We set up camp and took a short walk along the riverbank and had a good rest up. We decided to stay another night here so we could tour a bit of Nelson plus save some money on accommodation.

 This was our first night camping and I discovered very quickly that I was glad I packed the family tent as well as this one was way too small for my long legs. but we made do and it was used on other occasions