November 21st & 22nd - "Shut Up!"

Today we drove about 6 hours or so to Wellington to catch the ferry the next morning.  (*Luckily we made a reservation about 10 days ago.)  Stopping along the way in little towns we passed through including this one where we found the *Roaches! We also made a pit-stop for *pie and an iced long black coffee in the beautiful town of Whanganui.  The woman at the coffee stand was probably in her 50's originally from the USA, followed her Kiwi husband here more than 20 years ago "because he's a mama's boy".  They've since divorced but she loved NZ so much she decided to stay anyway!

Our choice of chips for this road-trip was BBQ Ribs.  Seriously good chips.  Aside from the crunch of the chips, you could tell yourself you were actually eating BBQ Pork, like Chinese BBQ pork.  Super tasty!

Just under an hour away from Wellington we thought we'd try and sort out accommodations by phone for a place to sleep.  I called a place named Harcourts Kiwi Holiday Park to see if they had any cabins available. Spoke with a women who wasn't very friendly at 5:20pm; said yes they had space and that she would only hold the cabin for us until 6:30. I said great, but then asked of she could hold it till 7pm just in case we ran into traffic...She said, "well if you have a credit card I can hold it all night."  So silly me, I gave her my credit card#.  After mapping out our route we realized that this place wasn't as close to town as we thought it was and our ferry was at 8:00am so we'd need to be there by 7:00am.  About 45 minutes after I spoke to the women, around 6:10pm, we called to cancel saying we weren't going to make it there. She then told me she was going to charge my credit card a cancellation fee.  I tried to dispute by saying that it hadn't even been an hour; well before 6:30pm, the original time she said she could hold it for, and that she never advised there would be a cancellation fee. She then rudely told me to "Shut Up!" and that I was putting words into her mouth, and that I was being unreasonable.  I tried to again speak and she said "whatever you're being charged!" then hung up the phone on me.  My blood was boiling.  I was driving so I pulled over to try and call visa to put a stop on my card but she had already charged it.  It was only $23.00 but still.  Arrgh...  I knew there was no point calling her back since she already hung up on me.  We finally got to our cabin but I was still reeling.  Took me a long time to let it go after trying to find their equivalent to our BBB.  I found the Consumer Affairs but it would be quite a lengthy process so I chalked it up to a lesson learned to let Karma work it out.  But just to have the last word, I called her back about an hour later to advise her that I would be filing a complaint with Consumer Affairs of NZ and she said "I only told you 6:30 because I didn't think you had a credit card, WHATEVER" and hung up on me again.  

One bad egg is ok for all the amazingly nice people we've come across on our trip so far.  The majority of Kiwis are over the top friendly, helpful and generous!  :)

That night we went out to this Fish & Chips place we heard about and I'm so sorry we forgot to take pics but it was huge!  We didn't know that each serving would be almost a whole fish each.  It was crazy big, can't remember the name of the place either...guess I was still distraught over dragon-lady!

We got to the ferry early at 6:45am the next morning and Matt & Amelie pull up beside us.  (Just met them in the line up.) They are from Quebec but have been traveling off and on for about 8 years picking fruit.  Their last 2 years were in Australia but they also lived in BC for a few years cherry picking.  Avid fruit pickers!  They told us they can make up to $450/day each, picking fruit!  Cray cray!  They were off to Blenheim to pick cherries that day!

We spent  most of the 3 hour ferry getting to know them over breakfast.  I managed to find some time to write reviews on multiple sites about the Harcourts lady as well as advising the website where I found them about the incident!  OK I think I've finally let it go now...maybe.

Ryan tried to take some pics as we came through the Cook Strait and all the Bays along the way.  It was quite foggy and windy out there but here is a decent one.  







After having lunch with Matt and Amelie at Seamus' Irish Pub, below is a pic of Picton we took just as we started our drive on the long squiggly roads over the mountains to Nelson. The roads were so narrow and squiggly I could barely go over 30km.

Picton

When we got to Nelson we saw the beautiful Tahunanui Beach that was in the main center of town.  We found a super cheap place to stay for the next 3 nights at $8/person/night for camping.  We thought this was a steal and the only catch was the coin operated showers ($2 for 6 minutes..Yikes) and if you wanted your phone charged you had to pay .50 and leave it at reception for a few hours.  It was still cheaper even if I needed a 12 minute shower which I only did once.  We got our tent set up and then headed back to the beach for a walk because we couldn't resist. 

That's Nelson in the back hill there.  This is a place you could easily live for a long time.

After a walk on the beach in the sunset we found Smuggler's Pub which was a little on the pricey side but we figured since we were only spending $16/night for the next 3 nights accommodations, it was ok to splurge a little.  Totally worth it. Ryan had the BBQ Ribs and I had the King Fish with roasted Kumara, caper berries and spinach.  So Good!!!  And of course beer and wine!  :)



*The main ferry (about 3 hours long) from the North Island to the South Island is called the InterIslander and we figured it worked the same way BC Ferries did where you can either make a reservation or drive up early and wait.  But just to be sure, we checked out their website only to find that they were fully booked up a month in advance.  We wanted to be on the ferry next week.  It seemed odd so Ryan called and they confirmed that for cars the next available sailing was Dec 20th!  I'm not going to lie, Ryan started to panic a little while I was searching the interwebs and found the reason is that one of the boats had a malfunction so they were running short.  Luckily we had our NZ Lonely Planet and I read that there are two options for ferries and the second being the BlueBridge which we got on but were booking about 10 days in advance too.

*For any of my friends reading the blog that don't already know this, "Roach" is Ryan's last name.

*For any past or future reference, "pie" in NZ always means a savory meat pie of sorts.  The most popular and original is mince which is really just ground beef and gravy but some put veg in it like peas.  However I have heard from a local we met recently (John) that he's not a fan of the veg in a mince pie.  "If I want a mince pie, I want a mince pie, none of those peas and carrots and veg in it, it should be just meat".  The next most popular would be steak and this can come with either cheese, mushroom, kidney or veg but not usually all together.  Ryan's fav seems to be the Steak & Mushroom.  We've also tried the curry chicken pie, that was a miss... as well as the venison pie and that one is usually a big hit with us.  Each time it's been quite good.  And might I also add that I have a knack for choosing the less good pie and always wish that I had chosen the same one Ryan did after I've had a bite of his.  Nothing that a little "tomato sauce" can't fix though.  Tomato sauce is their version of ketchup with a hint of all spice or something like that...can't quite put my finger on it but I do prefer the regular Heinz ketchup which McDonald's with gladly sell you for .40 a packet.

p.s. forgot to mention on our road trip to Nelson from Picton we stopped a few times for snacks in super tiny towns, bought some homemade choc fudge and a date sugar swirl scone; Ryan bought a bag of Spare Ribs flavored chips.   Seriously,  Kiwis know how to do chips right.   They actually Tasted like ribs accept for the crunch.  Ryan said they were reminiscent of BBQ pork. Yum!