North Island Day 2

We only had a 55km drive to the ferry this morning (which takes around 50min) so we had planned to leave by 8am. At 7:30 our hosts came through saying there was a tsunami on it's way to New Zealand. So we went to watch the news and phoned around to find out what the status was. The advice was to go to Picton as planned. We checked in at 9 and the only change was that instead of leaving at 10:05 we left at 9:50.

We are so thankful to the Lord that we had planned to overnight in Seddon. The road from Kaikoura was closed this morning (that was how our hosts had found out - the husband had been turned around as he was heading down to Kaikoura at 7am). So if we had tried to get to the ferry from home we would not have made it.

It was another beautifully clear day and the children loved going outside to look around.

It was so calm too.

The blue route is the normal one but because of the tsunami warning we used the Northern route today (I have drawn a line in red). This was why we left earlier - it was expected to take an extra 20 min this way.

Leaving the South Island sounds behind us.

Rachel and I are in Guiding uniform as we had gotten permission to sell (or try and sell) Guide Biscuits at the Ferry Terminal. The sales were not that successful but Rachel got over $30 in donations. So that will be a great help to our unit.

South Island to the left (but quite far away) and North Island on the right.

We had lunch in Wellington and then headed up to Palmerston North. A 140km trip which takes around 2 hours.

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Rachel was very excited to see Steffan and Ioan again. The boys had developed the fort since the last time we visited (16 months ago) and the game just continued where it had left off.