Mail boat

We had booked ourselves on one of those experiences people rave about on TripAdvisor - a cruise around Marlborough Sound on the mail boat. It delivers mail to the various farms and lodges dispersed in this watery labyrinth. It also takes tourists along for the trip.

It was a sunny day and the pictures I hope give a sense of the beauty of the area. The boat was equipped with everything except a sound system adequate for the task of providing commentary. There was a great deal we would have loved to have known about the area but we really didn’t get told much, and a good part of what we were told was inaudible. (Although I did learn that Ernest Rutherford was a local boy. The local products are brains and mussels...)

It was very windy, which explains Lyn’s ‘tousled’ look above. I ventured onto the top deck and a gust blew my cap overboard. Sort of ironic that I should lose it on this trip - it was my souvenir from the ‘Titanic’ museum in Belfast. Never mind, ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

We ate our packed lunch on a working sheep farm. The tour there wasn’t much but we got a good sense of the sort of isolation that meant homeschooling your kids till you sent them away to boarding school. The place featured the jawbones of feral pigs and a caged possum.

At one point we did a short bushwalk and met up with the boat again at the next pier.

By late afternoon we were back in Havelock, jumped in the car and made our way to Blenheim. Dinner at the pub and then washing to do.