Saturday and our New Zealand Adventure begins.

We were up before the crack of dawn and our old friend tiredness reared its ugly head as we struggled to get our day nder way. We had decided to have breakfast on the ferry rather than at the hotel as doing that meant we could have thirty minutes more in bed, a complete luxury.
Our taxi driver arrived a few minutes earlier and twenty dollars later we were dropped at the ferry port to find the world and his dog standing in a huge queue.
We fought our way to the ticket office and once there were told by the lady behind the desk that she could find no record of our booking. Imagine our complete dismay. She told us to squeeze our way around to the ticket office as they had a different system. Squeezing around meant elbowing our way through the throng and once there we were more than relieved when the lady found us. Computers tell no lies. We were issued our tickets, our suitcases were summarily taken from us and we were instructed to join the throng at Gangway three. When I asked exactly where this was I w told to follow the queue, as the multitude began to move it was clear that everybody on foot was boarding though gangway three.
Imagine our further surprise when we eventually saw the boat to see that it had originally been called the Pride of Cherbourg, one used on crossings from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. It was now renamed the Kaitaki.
Part of our problem was that there was a super liner in port and all of her passengers were on a day trip to South Islan on the same boat were on. It was impossible to get a lounge seat and we had a breakfast of sorts, Rosemarie had an egg roll and I had a ham and cheese one.
After replenishing ourselves we went tot he top deck, one side was heavily overcrowded so we sat on the windy side watching the North Isalnd drift away and the Soutb Island come into view.it really is the most spectacular ferry crossing the last hour is in a sound with marvellous scenery reminiscent of Norway,as we came into port our side of the boat filled up too.
Disembarking was easy and we retrieved our suitcases with little bother and set off to walk to our van hire place, by now the sun was beating down. We found the place and ten minutes later people we has been sat behind on the deck arrived in a minibus provided by the van hire people for free. No one had thought to tell us.
The next hour was spent learning about the van and having mastered the basics we were on our way. We headed for the local supermarket to buy provisions and on having done that I noticed the engine braking was not working so we went back to the van hire people, who quietly adjusted the throttle and got the thing to work, all of two minutes work.
We then set off to our campsite about a mile outside of town and once we had booked in I tried to unlock the locker which contains the mains electric lead. I couldn't open it no matter what I did. In the end I had to admit defeat and tell Rosemarie, in disbelief she came to try her luck but to no avail. So we decided to go back again to the van hire people. I was glad  to find the man there couldn't open it either even with a new key key he fetched. Eventually it did spring open and it was suddenly clear the key was doing very little as the lock mechanism was loose. A screw driver was fetched and repairs made and once again we were back to our camp site.
By now it was three pm and we had had no lunch so we remedied that and after a couple of small beers I suddenly felt the need for a nap.
Having woken we walked into Picton through the marina and saw three stingrays and about a million krill the latter of which had turned the water red.
We walked back to the camp and had delicious tea and an early night, after far too much excitement for one day.