Saturday Morning we got up at 6:30am to check the weather (by check, I mean pop our heads outside and look around). We were planning to go kayaking and hike part of the Queen Charlotte trek, but unfortunately that got cancelled due to heavy rain and winds. Our backup plan was a ferry ride out to a bird sanctuary island and spending the day at a resort, going to the spa and hiking to a waterfall, but at 6:30am with heavy rain and gale winds, we decided to nix that as well and go back to sleep for a couple hours.
When we woke up again, still pouring rain, we decided to head into town anyways and go through the local shops. They had surprisingly affordable souvenirs and everyone was keen to talk to us and learn about where we were from. I guess a lot of other people's activities had been cancelled too, the downtown area was busy.
A tree in the middle of the street
We got a bit ridiculous..
This was a clothing line and made me smile since I've read To kill a mockingbird. Too expensive to buy, of course, but still cool.
After about an hour, we had thoroughly covered Picton's downtown shopping district and decided to venture down to Blenheim since it was a bigger city, in hopes of finding something else to do. We stopped by a chocolate factory and had lunch and free wine tasting at a vineyard nearby.
The rain outside of Picton was pretty miserable.
Cute truffles from the chocolate factory!
We are very wet and cold in this photo
mmm Lunch!
After lunch we ventured into Blenheim to do some more shopping. The weather cleared up nice and it got sunny and warm for a while. We spent the majority of out time in Kathmandu, the outdoor / adventure-y New Zealand brand store, they were having a good sale and we're both suckers for practical outdoorsy things. I picked up that pack away backpack on Friday, Kelly got a rain jacket in Blenheim and we were both ready to get back to Picton and tackle the outdoors.
Driving back into the rain
I had really wanted to hike all day, so even though it was muddy and rainy we decided to do a short hour and a half trek just to say we did it. We were planning on heading back to the house afterwards anyways, so getting wet at this point was okay.
My camera was in a plastic bag, but still took pretty good photos
We passes this neat little stream / waterfall
At the top, it was quite windy and very very cold, but being excited to have reached the lookout we paused for a photo and granola bar before heading back down
The sun tried to come through for my picture. This is looking down at Picton and out into the Marlborough Sounds. On a clear day you can see way out into the islands. This was still cool though.
Back at the bottom
We kept seeing these weka birds, they look an awful lot like kiwis. This was a mom and her baby birds, so cute and fuzzy.
After warming up back home we headed down to the marina to a local pub, Jolly Rogers, on recommendation, for dinner. Burgers and fries after a cold rainy day, there was just nothing better. The evening was pretty quiet, we decided against karaoke and headed back to the house to study and stretch since we were both sore from the climb.
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