Wellington to Buller Gorge, New Zealand

At the beginning of October Garrett had a road safety conference in Wellington, New Zealand.  Once the conference was over we decided to make a holiday out of it and explore the beautiful south island.

If you're not familiar with New Zealand geography, Wellington is at the south end of the north island.  In order to get to the south island we decided to take a 3 hour ferry from Wellington to Picton through Cook Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. 

Lucky for us, neither of us got sea sick.  Many other passengers weren't so lucky.

The main point of taking the ferry was to get us from Point A to Point B.  But the scenery between those two points was incredible, crossing open ocean and making our way through the fiords of Queen Charlotte Sound.



Once we arrived in Picton our rental car was waiting for us....our little gold Nissan Sunny...

This was our first driving adventure on the wrong side of the road.  Blinkers and wipers are swapped.  And we decided to throw the stick shift in there, too.

 

One thing that I looked forward to most on our drive was seeing green grassy fields full of grazing sheep.  And oh, did my wish come true.  There was no shortage of my "sheepies" along our drive along green hills, across bridges, and over countless streams and rivers.  

On our first day of driving we stopped at the Buller Gorge Swing Bridge, the longest swing bridge in New Zealand.  I'm not terrified of heights, but I'm not a huge fan either.  But this thing was so narrow and looked kind of sketchy.  But we're alive.

 So, that was Day 1 in New Zealand.  There's so much more to come.