Retirement Trip - South goes North

Saturday dawned misty so we decided we would head over to Picton and chance our arm on changing our ferry crossing.  We arrived at 9:45am parked up and went to the ticket office.  We were told that we could change to the 11am ferry as long as we were in the check-in queue by 10am, needless to say we made a mad dash back to the camper and straight round to the check-in.  No time to worry about the fact that we were going on a nearly 4 hour sea crossing - I'm not a great lover of boats - seasick and all that.  But as it turned out it was a beautiful day and we got ourselves a bench out on the front deck of the ship, sunny but very breezy.  The views were amazing and neither of us felt sick which was great. Though Peter got did get sunburnt.

As we disembarked we got a huge shock - so much traffic - after three weeks in the South with very quiet roads it was a bit disconcerting. Once we cleared Wellington and its suburbs we finally started to encounter the type of roads we had been used too though with more vehicles. We had a great twisty climb up Rimutaka Hill.  Luckily we had parked up when a long convoy of trucks came in the opposite direction, pulling into the parking bay to let the miles of traffic pass that had built up behind them.  Photos below

Once clear of the hill the land turned flat and featureless, burnt yellow from the drought conditions, poor cattle trying to nibble at non existent green shoots.  We ended the day on a campsite in Masterton, a long sprawling town built mainly on one level.  We ended up having Chinese for dinner which was actually very good, huge portions with lots of lovely veggies

Sunday 15 March

Another bright and sunny start, we headed off towards Lake Taupo for a two night stay.  Along to way we stopped into Napier - The Art Deco capital of New Zealand - .  Napier was destroyed by earthquake and rebuilt in the Art Deco style, I took so many photographs, I hope you are ready

It was an enjoyable wander round. We got a Mexican lunch and checked in on the news, things were really starting to look grim around the world, but still nothing from the Foreign Office to cause alarm.

Left Napier mid afternoon and motored up the Thermal Explorer Highway scenic route ending the day at a campsite just on the outskirts of Lake Taupo - this is where I stopped filling in my journal, so where we went next will be down to my photographs and the maps.

I'll leave you there today