It was fab to see Kirstie and Johann again. I was particularly pleased to find Kirstie had thought of getting something for pudding, and after Johann's anti-stereotyping surprise rejection of the apple strudel, we had tip-top hokie-pokie ice cream with added choc-whizz, here being modelled by Johann. I was well chuffed as you might be able to imagine.
After a very relaxing couple of nights we were genuinely gutted to have to say goodbye. Who knows when we will see them again, but hopefully we'll work something out. Possibly when we realise we can never settle again and set off to become professional travel writers, or some other pretend employment.
We left early to reach the 1:30pm ferry. In the end we had plenty of time, enough to stop at the super tasty KFC, that's the unfortunately acronymed Kaikoura Food Company. Here we had a coffee and as advised purchased a 10 dollar box of their superb creme brulee fudge. It was fecking gorgeous and only just about lasted the ferry journey.
I popped up on deck to take some piccies once the ferry was on its way. It was very pretty heading out of Queen Charlotte Sound.
A beautiful day for it.
The ferry does some quite sharp turns as it works its way up through the sounds. Its a bit disconcerting from down below as it leans more and more to one side and feels disturbingly like it might tip over.
Fortunately the swell didn't increase much when we reached the open sea and we had a nicely chilled crossing to the north island.
Wellington lived up to its notoriously pricey reputation in the accommodation stakes so we spent a night in the incredibly busy but well ran YHA hostel. Our main purpose for staying in Wellington was to get our Indian visas sorted. By the time we arrived though the Indian High Commission had already closed helpfully being open just between 10am and 1pm. We had a quick look round and received first hand evidence of why its called windy-welly. It was blowing a massive hoolie. It was pretty damn funny watching the runners going nowhere on the harbour walkway.
Eventually we did manage to achieve our goal of getting some utterly hideous passport photographs for out visa application. After wandering around looking for a cheapo booth we ended up heading to an outrageously over priced pharmacy and enduring the shame of having them processed manually. I was tempted to take a picture of them and add them in here, but this idea was vetoed by Clairy (quite rightly) on the grounds that it would destroy the pristine beauty of our blog.
The next day the wind had died down and our visa application went incredibly smoothly, although we did find it rather hard to leave our passports on the desk off the high commission along with about 50 others plus random bits of paper. They assured us it would be fine and they would be sent by our provided courier envelopes ASAP to our friends Amanda and Warwick in Auckland. We crossed our fingers and headed off to explore a bit more.
Clairy spotted this apparently famous kiwi tree with its bright red blossoms.
A welcoming alcoholic's front room.
Although that's not necessarily a very good indication of Wellington, apart from maybe the alcoholic thing. It had almost a London feel in its massive amount of drinking establishments spilling out onto the streets. It also had a very flashy business district that we sauntered through and some interesting little cafes.
We particularly liked this place called Ernesto's that did an incredible carrot cake, and was done out really nicely inside.
And out.
Having got our visa process on its way, we headed back to the car and set off to explore the north island.
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