Wellington ferry

Driving down the western coast, we made a spur of the moment decision to just keep going. We'd heard wonderful things about Wellington, but it seemed too hard to find a good, affordable place to rent (while David drives, I've been rapidly eating through the mobile data on my new NZ cell phone plan, checking the trademe.com listings for rentals (and cars to buy!) for each town we pass through). Our requirements for a town to settle in are becoming clearer as we go - somewhere small and rural (with beautiful countryside, full of great hikes and weekend getaways), but close enough to a city and a university that we can easily take advantage of both. I keep wondering if maybe we should have checked Wellington a bit more - I had the chance to visit at a later date (on an extremely long layover, after one of my University of Auckland trips), and I REALLY liked this town. It's the government seat (the capitol of NZ), full of great museums. Also a great art scene. And excellent food. We had looked into it before arriving in NZ and were put off by its weather (they call it Windy Welly. It's known for its horizontal rain!), but the longer we are in NZ, the more we're realizing that weather that is a bit extreme and highly variable is pretty much the norm ('four seasons in a day' is a common NZ mantra, usually said with some pride). At any rate, on this day in Jan, we discovered that there was space on the late afternoon ferry, we booked our passage online, and raced through the blur of beautiful Wellington, making it with just minutes to spare onto the 3 hour ($300!) ferry to the South Island.

 Cold and beautiful on deck. Most of the passengers snug in the warm lounges below.

A sense of calm descending after our mad dash down the coast and across Wellington. Beautiful gray blue sunset as we leave the tumultuous Cook Strait, and enter the peaceful Marlborough Sounds.