Hello South Island, howareya?

We left the North Island on the Interisland Ferry in the pouring rain on a Friday, and arrived at Picton on the South Island in the sunshine about five hours later. The ferry ride was quite beautiful, especially through the Marlborough sounds when we reached the South Island. Our first night, we had arrangements to stay at a local hostel and pick up a rental car the next morning so we could visit Nelson, Blenheim, and more of the Marlborough region. Our hostel (Atlantis Backpackers) was probably the oddest hostel I've ever been to. An odd mix of children, old men, and then us, the two young travelers.

The panorama function on my phone made my leg look a little funky...

We went to Nelson for the afternoon on Saturday and walked around the town a bit before heading to the home of our couchsurfing host Delia in Motueka, about 20 minutes south of Abel Tasman National Park. We stayed two nights at her home along with a couple other travelers and had a wonderful time eating dinner together and playing with her adorable puppy Reamus. Sunday morning and early afternoon we hiked about 20k in Abel Tasman National Park, which is one of the Great Walks, all along beautiful coastline. We wished that we had planned our time better so that we could have done the full 3 day tramp but alas, we had already bought train tickets. After our tramp, Don went mountain biking for a bit while I sat in a lovely resort and did some blogging.

Abel Tasman was one of the most beautiful walks I've ever done...wish we had the three day we needed to do the whole thing

Panoramics work quite well on my phone

photo credit to Don Dauphinee...during his mountain biking adventure in Nelson

Monday, we went kayaking from Picton in the Marlborough sounds, which was beautiful. We realized that two hours wasn't even close to enough time to spent kayaking in that area...several days would be amazing!
Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at Leeway Backpackers in Blenheim, as they had very inexpensive beds and bike hires for us to peddle from vineyard to vineyard tasting wine upon wine. Mmmm...riding bikes to vineyards was the quaintest, loveliest, tastiest way we could have spent a day in Marlborough wine country.

This was our wine tasting at one vineyard...

At the next vineyard (Giesson) we not only did a tasting, but we got a platter and a set of wines to taste with the platter!

Delicious food