Heading South

Making it back to civilisation safely, we pack the car for the grand trip to the south Island and set off. A four hour drive to Wellington, an overnight sleep in the car between the dockside service road and the railway line, a three hour ferry crossing and we drive off the other side onto the south Island, turn on the radio and manage by sheer chance to catch the owner of the Waihiki ferry company getting a roasting about the previous night's debacle which managed to make the headlines. The South Island is going to be good.

Our plan for the trip is to drive in an anticlockwise direction around the South Island and arrive back at the top in Picton (the ferry town) in three and a half week's time. We're driving a Nissan Prairie which is Nic's Mum's car, and which has been kindly lent to us to facilitate our seeing of NZ. It's a car for the Japanese market, so nothing we have in the UK. All round it's a pretty decent car (if a little underpowered), it's a pseudo people carrier with seating for seven if required or it can all fold down. In folded down form, the flattened seats resemble something of the floor of a bouncy castle, roaming up and down in a manner that doesn't really fulfil the manufacturer's promise of a bed in the back. No problem though, and a visit to the timber yard later, a few 2X4's and some ply, some old bed struts from the garage and a couple of foam mattresses later and we have our selves a fully working proper bed, as comfy as a real one. Underneath the bed, between us and the undulating seats, and doors, there are plenty of nooks and crannies that have offered us all the cubby holes and storage solutions that we could ask for. With easy access to everything we need and all of it out of the sight of burglars, it's a mobile home that IKEA would be proud of.