Picton… little ferry town

As Picton is a small little town we wanted our last day to be relaxing before our 5am start back to Auckland. The hostel we were staying at had a hot tub and served free Edmund’s self-saucing pudding, so we decided we would cook dinner, have some local Marlborough wine, and go hot tubbing before heading off to bed.

So, we walked to the harbor to buy supplies for our curry-making, where my credit card broke the eftpos machine. We ended up chatting to the young cashier of about 17 years of age (his boss had to clear our alcohol purchase) who was super curious about the United States, tattoos, and how a Kiwi and American met [on a bus on Chile for those who do not know]. He commented that we must have enjoyed our vacation to smaller, “quieter” towns and how the big city life of Wellington was not relaxing. Wellington, the nations capital, has a population of about 200,000, hardly qualifying as a big city compared to New York, San Francisco, or even Auckland. It just reminded me that I was in New Zealand, a country with a population the size of the SF Bay Area.

At this point, my sandfly bites were extremely painful so we walked to the harbor where I dunked my feet in the cool water, braving the jellyfish, to get my feet some relief. I also pounded back my choco bar ice cream, a NZ novelty with delight, knowing full well that at 8pm the hostel staff would be serving chocolate pudding with ice cream. To burn off some final energy we tossed around a rugby ball [I am getting quite good left-handed] and then headed to the kitchen to cook up some yum [as Kiwis would say] green curry.

We woke up at 5am to catch the first ferry of the day to begin our trip back up to Aucks!