Jan 21-22 Wellington toNelson

Competing pizza joints in Wellington. Apparently after all, there is a lighthearted approach to the hereafter.

Gail and I have developed a taste for Malaysian food, if not transportation, Rasa is the third such eatery we've enjoyed.

We could not resist a return to Te Papa, where I was able to take one last shot of Marae meeting hall, and catch some errors, like not identifying Te Hau ki Turanga, the traditional hall.

We walked the grounds more and went into the European side of the cultural mix exhibit. I never thought I'd see Gail turn her back on a Barbara Hepworth sculpture...

Saturday 22, we took the Blue Bridge from Wellington to Picton, a very large ferry. We started the morning inside, Bidding fairwell to North Island and hello to South – yes it's there in the mist, distance and rain on the window, to the left. I promise.
My friends, there really is a place called 'The Queen's Straight', which seems both obvious and an oxymoron.
It was more than a third of the journey and magical.





We arrived in Picton to the middle of the annual Maritime Festival. These very tall pirate lasses were handing out brochures and battling the wind.


This team came in second against an old airplane pontoon with seven paddlers in the home-made-freestyle paddle race. The boy here served as ballast, and the dad paddled like a fiend. Yes, that's an outrigger bathtub, and took first place in my book.

Gail was taking a picture of her favorite type of wooden boat construction, when this fellow wandered into the picture. He kept annoying the staff and other visitors, by claiming that, although the Edwin Fox, built of teak in Calcutta in 1853, was old fashioned, his father had built a similar boat in Maine of oak in 1944, and had photos to prove it. (The Puritan at launch, Grey Boats, Malcolm Seavey, manager, Thomaston, ME, 1944. Jim was launched there by the same maker (different crew) in 1947.) The Edwin Fox is the 9th oldest boat in existence, and the only survivor of prison transport to Australia and settlers to NZ.

We then hopped the bus to Nelson, a two hour bus ride through hills and vineyards, and over a substantial mountain pass, welcomed by the summer sun, low over the mud flats (and behind a cloud bank) at 8 pm.