Our North Island Trip

Finally our trip to the North Island arrived. We were all very excited about it. Too excited though. We left at 4am hoping to have the girls sleeping in the car for a few hours. But they were all awake. So we had a few extra stops and were thankful when Ruth and Hannah finally got to sleep and we could get some traveling done without stops. The final check in time for the ferry was 9am, and we just made it on time.

Unfortunately Brendon was feeling a bit car sick so I did most of the driving. It was not the easiest drive either as there was so much fog. But it was beautiful none the less and we looked forward to the trip back and seeing the beautiful surroundings without the fog.

We did not stay on deck for too long as it was very windy. But it was beautiful.
Rachel so enjoyed looking out to sea and Ruth just kept saying she wanted to go swimming. :-)
We left by 10am and by 10:30 we were enjoying brunch. They were serving "breakfast" and we asked for a small plate for Ruth and no bread, so they piled the plate with so many sausages and bacon. Ruth also quite enjoyed the fish. Brendon & I enjoyed lasagna and Rachel had a sausage roll.

Rachel enjoyed the "games" area.

This is from one of the side decks. Goodbye South Island.

It was a good thing we ate soon after leaving as once we were out on the open sea Brendon got really sea sick. He really felt so bad. So I had my hands full keeping an eye on Rachel and Ruth and then keeping Hannah entertained (as she was not interested in sleeping).

We had some other guests for the trip. We had been asked (begged actually) to bring these birds with us. They were dropped off at our place on Friday night and the new owner picked them up at the ferry on Saturday. We had a blanket covering them and at one point we took it off. They made such a noise though that we put it back on. We only took it off once the car was parked on the ferry. I was very relieved to see they were all fine when we arrived.