Nelson & Picton

Queen Charlotte Sound -- lovely!
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It’s worth a three hour ferry ride to get to sunny and warm Picton on the south island! We arrived in mid-afternoon and since it was too late to try and tackle one of the Queen Charlotte Track walks (which is one of the Great Walks in NZ), we hit a short hike out to the Snout (a peninsula heading out from Picton town with views to the west of Queen Charlotte Sound. The views all along the way were stunning and it was well worth the short hike (2 hours round trip), although we realized that we need to get in better shape for the Milford Track tramp (4 days, 33 miles) that we are hiking in two weeks.

Scott's creative pic of the day (at Founders brewery)
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After a just one nights stay, we made our way west to Nelson – the city in NZ with the most number of sunny days in a year on average. The drive was quite pretty, but do make note here that we did not head south to the Marlborough wine region! We know that Scott had his fill on wineries up to now, so I gave up hope on getting to the Sauv Blanc capital of NZ, but no worries, as there have been plenty of good Sauv Blancs along the way!

Ahhhh.....the south island

Trafalgar Square in Nelson
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Nelson is a nice town with a great town center and plenty of artists populating the area. We didn’t do much here other than hit three good breweries (do make note here that we’ve now visited seven breweries in NZ so we’re making up for all of those winery visits!) The breweries here are big on ciders and alcoholic lemonade and one also distilled their own vodka and gin which you can bring in your refillable bottles and fill as needed. Good for the environment, eh?? We also took a stroll through the Queens Gardens and stopped at the site of the first NZ rugby match in 1870.

The Queens Gardens in Nelson
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Tidbit of the day:

The Tasman Brewery was made somewhat famous as it was requested to make a low alcohol version of it’s stout beer so that the Lord of the Rings crew could drink it without getting too loopy between takes. They made it with 1% alcohol content rather than the usual 5%. They called in SobeRing Thought – great name.