I felt a little better when I woke up. I suppose that all the tossing and turning over the night had desensitized me a little bit. Then I took a shower. The water hitting my skin was painful, but mostly just on the shoulders. When I shampooed my hair I kept yelling, "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" because lifting my arms above my head was still so very painful. Somehow I got the shampoo in. Getting it out proved to be more difficult.
Amanda got another coat of aloe vera on me and somehow, somehow I got a shirt on. The shirt was very uncomfortable, but I managed. We checked out of the hotel and did some shopping around Nelson.
I kind of liked Nelson. It’s not a bad city, really. Our first stop ended up being a guitar shop, where I found this ridiculously cute guitar that couldn’t have been more than a meter long, it’s intended for kids but I had to try it out. I very nearly bought it just because it was so cute, but it proved to be very difficult to tune and then to keep in tune. So I decided that while cute, it wasn’t practical. Unfortunate, really, because I would have totally bought it. It was small enough to fit in my luggage, but I probably would have just used it as my second carryon.
Amanda and Alyssa checked out some clothing stores, and I wandered around. Two large streets made up of mostly shops, and it seemed to be almost entirely women’s clothing stores. Then, right in the middle of it, there was a hunting and fishing shop. It seemed very out of place.
Amanda finally mailed the postcard to her family that she’d picked up in Christchurch.
We ate at a pizza place called Hell. I thought it was awesome. As we entered I shouted, "Tonight we dine in HELL!!" Their pizzas had names like Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, Nemesis, and such. We got a large Greed and a large Mordor, which had venison pepperoni on it. We also got lemon pepper tater wedges and garlic bread. It was very reasonably priced and the food was delicious. Their pizza boxes had perforations so you could punch out part of it, which assembled into a 3D coffin if you only had one or two pieces left.
It is also noteworthy that Hell was across the street from St. Stephen’s Angelican Church.
After eating, we headed for Picton, where the ferry to the north island leaves from. Picton wasn’t very big. We ventured around the shops, which were largely souvenir-type things, and a lot of people commented on Alyssa’s sunburn. I was wearing a t-shirt so you couldn’t really see mine, but she had a tube top on. There was a store called Music World, so we went in, hoping that maybe we could get some new music for the van since the Punk-O-Rama CDs are starting to get old. We’ve been with those for nearly a week now. Music World was a terrible disappointment. Seriously, I counted the CDs in the store: 55. Total. And 15 of them were Christmas music. They had some for less than $10, but the only one I might’ve bought was Eve6’s Horrorscope, for six bucks, but I’ve already bought that twice, Amanda and Alyssa both have it, so it didn’t seem like a wise purchase. Perhaps if it had been the Japanese version instead of the American, I’d have sprung at it (the Japanese version has extra tracks), but no.
We got some ice cream, hit up a few more shops where we bought nothing, and headed back to Lucy for another coat of aloe vera, and looked through our guidebooks to try to find a place in Wellington to stay for the night. We figured we had best call ahead since the ferry wouldn’t be getting in to Wellington until around 10pm, and from our experience most reception areas, at least on the south island, close before 8, usually at 6. Ridiculous, I say, to close the reception at a hotel/motel/hostel/campground so early! That should definitely be a 24 hour thing. I guess New Zealand is just way more laid back than America. Anyway, we picked a holiday park (which is like a campground), called them up, and got a cabin for the night at a very reasonable price. Their reception area closed at 10:30pm, I thought we might make it but wasn’t sure, so she said there was a yellow box on the front of the reception building where she’d leave the key and a map. We headed for the ferry.
The ferry was really cool. It was not at all what I had expected. I definitely expected something bigger than the Colsac Ferry up in Merrimac, Wisconsin, which I’ve ridden many times in my youth, but I guess I hadn’t expected such a step up in luxury. Inside was as nice as the airplanes we’d been on, but less cramped. The upper deck even had a full bar, complete with full time bartender. We sat on some nice couches and played a few games of Zombie Fluxx, then just read for a while. Amanda played Civilization III on Alyssa’s laptop. We watched the south island slip away, never to be seen again by me, probably, and watched the sun go down over it. It was dark when we arrived in Wellington (duh), and we were amazed that it was an actual city. Seriously, Wellington looks like Madison, at least from the limited bits of it we’ve seen thus far. We even ended up on a highway that looked like an interstate. On the South Island, I think the only four-lane highway we’d seen was in Nelson, and that was just a big road. This one had actual exit ramps. As we were driving down the highway in Wellington toward our campground, we saw an exit ramp that came directly down into a gas station, and then another ramp leading up from it. There were no other roads to this gas station. We thought that was cool.
When we got to the holiday park, at 10:40, just in time to miss the reception staff, I found the yellow box and there were two envelopes in it. One was labeled "Triggs" so I took it. Once we were piled into the cabin, I went to take a 2 and read some Stephen King before bed. The toilet had the strangest flushing method I’ve seen yet.
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