Palmy to Christchurch

 We had an early start to the day, Rick and Gillian

arrived at our house just before 5 and we set off for Wellington and our date with the Bluebridge ferry. 

We made excellent time and arrived at the check in with time to spare, which as it happens was just as well. 

When I first booked this ferry we were overseas and I was obviously tired as I selected the incorrect date of departure. This error was picked up by my eagle eyed travelling companions and I quickly put it right, only to be informed that I had the time wrong for the return leg. I managed to change this also and all was well until I handed the booking to the check in girl who told me we should have sailed yesterday!  Yikes how can that be!  So we then had to go to the passenger terminal to be told that no we weren’t booked yesterday but in actual fact the booking was for 3 days hence!  We would need to go on standby but the the next available sailing would be 2am tomorrow. After much sweating the very friendly receptionist told us she had cribbed 5m of space from the freight dept and we could sail. Whew, I have no idea how that happened but lesson learnt; Let Robyn do the booking from now on. 

We were all relieved to get on board and all feeling rather hungry by now. In a hurry once again we all ordered a plate of fairly average scrambled eggs on toast. If we had bothered to read the menu we could have a much more appetising meal such as the really nicely presented smashed avocado on toast with a perfectly poached egg on top sprinkled with feta that arrived at an adjacent table. Grrrr and drool. 

The sailing was pretty smooth and before we knew it we were heading to Blenheim for lunch. 


Apart from a toilet break at the Kaikoura coast lookout and an ice cream stop in Cheviot we just chilled to good music until we arrived at our motel in Christchurch. 

It is so nice to be in warm weather, lets hope it stays that way. 

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