I travelled over to Nelson with the lovely Lettie Roach from Wellington. She was soon to start a pHD is Antartic sea ice modelling but had a week to spare for a short adventure. So, after much pondering, we decided a tramp around the Nelson Lakes would be a grand idea. It also turned out to be a complicated idea, but more on that later.
On arrival at Picton we hopped straight on the bus to Nelson, a two hour trip, and a very pleasant one at that. The South Island scenery is certainly more dramatic than the north; everything just seems a bit steeper, the shadows more contrasting and the colours slightly more vibrant (though I have some bias here).
The bus meanderd through the hills around Picton sounds and over the Pelorus River, where the Barrel Scene was filmed for The Hobbit. On a total tangent, this a really cool video about how they filmed around New Zealand. Is it lame I find the logistics around the filming far more interesting than the actual film?
Anyhoo - we got to Nelson and got a lift to the hostel we were staying in that night. Called the Custom House - it has definately been one of the more ‘characterful’ hostels of the trip! A main road one side and a working shipping yard the other promised a healthy amount of noise day and night, and the owners dodgy second hand car dealership on the side ensured there was plently of (I’m sure fairly illegal) cars to borrow to ferry travellers to and from the center of town. It was probably once a nice house, and definately has the potential to be amazing, but no one had cleaned the kitchen for who knows how long and there was a strange smell. However, it was certainly the cheapest hostel I’ve found so far at $24!
In between planning our trip the next day, we adventured around town. I have to admit, we were fairly baffeled. Nelson seemed like a odd place, sort of Stkiwi Austel meets somewhere flatter with a shipping yard. The skyline was dominated by a terribly ugly clock, and the atmosphere was quite stuffy. (Luckily I found it much nicer on futher aquaintance!)
Pet mince anyone?
I did however, really like this little bit of graffiti I found at the bottom of a wall
