Nelson

So yes, Nelson is yet another lovely small town (in fact I don`t think there was a single New Zealand town I didn`t like in some way). After another wee bit of a search to find a place that would let us sleep in our van we found the Tasman Bay Backpackers, another wonderfully comfortable backpacker place, this time serving free freshly baked chocolate pudding every evening.

They also provided free bikes, and good ones too, so needless to say we used those to explore all around the town for a couple of days. The first day we checked out the impressively large local weekly market, had lunch out by the quite airport right by the sea, and then visited the pretty cool WOW museum. Sarah headed back to the backpackers while I went for a spin outside the town to the old Mac brewery (now closed), and then rode some great cycle tracks back to the town centre to explore all the back streets, and finding the jewellers given the job of creating the actual rings in the Lord of the Rings movie!

Another day we used the bikes to check out the local Sunday flea market (and getting free hotdogs at a car market promotion we just happened to be passing - little did the really friendly car salemen know of my feelings with regard to cars in general, but their sausages were lovely!), then the local micro brewery and musuem at Fosters place (which had a cool old aircraft you could crawl all over).

Had the best Indian dinner I`ve had in New Zealand at the newly opened Indian Cafe restaurant, which we just stumbled into, followed by a good night in the Mean Fiddler Irish bar (again it just happened to be an Irish bar that had the most life at that time of the evening, and we had a really cosy spot right next to the wood stove too).

So after the few days chilling out in Nelson it was time to bounce on to Picton, from where the Interislander ferry departs for the North island.