Despite the merriment of the previous evening I managed to crawl out of bed on 18th March in time to catch the bus northwards. It was comfortable but there was no geography lesson from the driver on the way.

The route went along the east coast for some of the way and there were a few stops where I had time to take a photo or two. At one point there were dolphins leaping out of the sea just off the beach. Fur seals were visible on one of the beaches.

After several hours of the day had slipped pleasantly by, we reached the little ferry port of Picton, where there was a bit of time to wander around before the scheduled departure time.

The ferry was crowded – there didn’t seem to be as many daily sailings as you’d expect for the main connection between North Island and South Island. It was a bit smaller than I had expected – carrying fewer cars and trucks than the ferries that cross the English Channel. As we set off across the Cook Straight towards Wellington, there were beautiful views of the islands and headlands around Picton. A curiosity of the trip from Picton to Wellington is that both ends of the voyage are at at exactly the same latitude. Thus the ferry sails eastwards to get from South Island to North Island, with no northward component at all.

Though small, the ferry had a little cinema, and once we were away from land I sat in there to watch a film. It was a romantic comedy called “Ghost” with Woopi Goldberg playing a clairvoyant. When it finished I went on deck and found we were fast approaching the coast of North Island, and soon we docked at the New Zealand capital of Wellington.

Once off the ferry I found the correct intercity night bus for continuing the journey north to Auckland. I was lucky enough to get 2 seats to myself but I still found it harder to sleep than on many of the South American buses.

After a fairly sleepless night, the bus pulled in to the terminal in Auckland at 5:30 am. It was too early to call Rachel’s family, so I sat in an all night cafe for a couple of hours reading a book. Then, after phoning to confirm it was still OK to stay one more night, I got a bus to Epson and was soon relaxing over a coffee and toast with Roz.

I had several things to sort out in the centre, and by mid morning was heading back into the city. I went (of course) to the post office and found 6 more letters waiting for me at the poste restante desk. I sat in McDonalds to read them. Then, since my original ticket had me flying at 7:45 am the following day, I went to the Aerolineas Argentinas office to see if I could change it. They put me on a later flight with New Zealand Air. I went to get some films processed, and while waiting for the lab, I updated my diary, and photocopied the most recent pages. After picking up the slide films I sent off a package by surface mail consisting of 3 processed films, the photocopied diary pages, and also the all-important video of me doing the bungy jump.

Then I went back to Epsom for my last evening in New Zealand. It’s only 13 days since I arrived, but I have had a lot of fun in this country and I’m suddenly wishing that I’d allowed more time here. When booking the flight dates, my reasoning was that with 6 weeks to split between New Zealand and Australia, I would need to spend twice as long in Australia, because it is bigger – hence 2 weeks to “do” New Zealand and 4 weeks to “do” Australia…