Our trip to Twizel

Day one and two.




The Aratere on her second attempt at berthing.

 The trip started off on the wrong foot. The Aratere came into port and couldn’t hook up to the railway linkspan. After trying for some time it steamed away from the wharf again. Of course all those waiting to board were thinking the worst. Were we going to be stuck on the wharf until the next boat came in at 6.25pm. Staff members from Interislander came and told everyone that they had to wait until the tide went down before trying to link up again. This would be approximately an hour.



Going onto the Aratere

 Luckily this time it worked and finally at 3.25pm (an hour and twenty minutes late) we boarded the boat and made our way upstairs to the Aratere lounge. For those who have been on the Kaitaki this is very similar to that. It is a private lounge where you can relax in comfortable seats, have free food and drink, use your computer, or just blob. We did the latter.

The service in the lounge was absolutely fabulous. They lady in charge even went away and got different food for us as the beef enchilada’s were too stuffy for both Ian and I.


The trip across the straits was uneventful. No large swells, a few minor ups and downs, but nothing too bad.

We stayed the night at the Top 10 Holiday Park on the outskirts of Blenheim. By this time it was blowing quite hard.



Around the Kaikoura cost in the rain and wind.

 After a good nights sleep we set off towards Kaikoura. Now came the rain and wind which made driving quite difficult. But it also had the seals out in their droves on the rocks alongside the road.



Nins Binn Crayfish shop

We had to stop here to get a crayfish which became part of our lunch. Boy was it delicious. A little expensive, but well worth the cost especially if you haven’t had one for awhile.





Our lunch stop on the Hundlees.


Our stop for the night was at a Motor caravan park in Parnassus. This was originally the primary school but was closed down as pupil numbers had declined. The Motor Caravan Association bought it and have converted it into a stopover park for its members. By now the weather had really turned bad. Raining really hard and blowing, but we were very cosy tucked away in our campervan. Early to bed with a book then the best nights sleep I have had in a long time.

Tuesday we headed to Timaru. We stayed at Levels Motor Racing Track for the night then drove towards Fairlie on Wednesday morning.