ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

The 3-hour ferry ride to the South Island was smooth and picturesque. There are the usual good views of the surrounding mountainous coves, a short sea crossing then a maze of waterways of the expansive Marlborough Sound leading into Picton. We popped our heads out for a picture now and then, but with movies playing, cappuccino machines buzzing and couch-like seating, we took the time to get comfortable. It struck us that we were on a ferry similar to the one we took across from Baja to mainland Mexico only with half the rust and a crew that smiled as they prepared your mocha latte (oh yeah, and there were no lattes, just Mexican beer). We chuckled at a group of extremely high-maintenance girls (channeling the energy of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie) in the corner who seemed terribly out of place on the boat full of travelers, showing off their purses, uncomfortably trendy outfits and party pictures – they were the Jim Beam liquor promoter/cheerleader team. Coming to bring the party to you! To…where? The sheep?

Before we knew it we were pulling into Picton. A few isolated vacation homes dot the coves here and there but for the most part the tip of the South Island is natural and sparsely populated. Picton is hidden deep in the sound, built around a cove to receive the incoming traffic. Despite its role as the drop off point from the North Island, however, it is a clean, charming little town surrounded by mountains, with a main street and all. We would be back in 9 days so we hurried through to get our car and get on the road. At the car agency we encountered a small problem though. Although we had called ahead to confirm, the car we were supposed to be taking hadn’t come back yet. Big problem when your car rental company has only a few cars. We watched a nice English couple drive off in the first car in the lot. The second and only other one there was supposed to go to someone coming in the next morning. Realizing our entire South Island itinerary was in jeopardy, we turned on the charm – I, saying we’ve pre-paid, too bad for the people coming in tomorrow, we are taking that car – Jenny using the honeymoon line. Luckily the nice man saw things our way and we were off in someone else’s car. We were ecstatic that this one actually had FM radio and didn’t seam to have trouble starting.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 6:32 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.