After Kaikoura, we headed up to Picton for the night to catch our ferry in the morning.

New Zealand Road Trip – 1 down 4 to go

Stop 2 – Picton and the Ferry

Google Maps will not show the route we took because of the earthquake damage to Hwy 1. Basically, we just followed Hwy 1 up to Picton

Drive to the Ferry

Since we stayed in Kaikoura until after lunch, we drove straight to Picton. I

know shocking, we drove straight through Marlborough without stopping at any wineries. This is a beautiful drive and we did stop to take some pictures.

The reason we did not stop inMarlborough because 1) this area has most of the commercial wine production meaning I can get most of these wines in the States and 2) we are not big fans of sauvignon blanc.

We prefer the smaller wineries of Otago, Wiaheke, and Martinborough.

Lodging

We used our Top 10 membership and stayed at the Picton Top 10 Holiday Park at a powered site.

Top 10 is clean has all the facilities including a kitchen. Our camper van had a full kitchen. However, I liked using the kitchen at the holiday park because then the whole camper van didn’t smell like food.

Most have dump sites and water to refill the camper van.

We are big fans of Top 10.

Eating

I made us dinner from our grocery stop, so we didn’t try any of the restaurants in Picton. I made us sandwiches for our ferry ride the next day. So not many recommendations here….

Experiences

We really didn’t get much time in Picton. We walked around town around town and then headed back to the holiday park to have some wine and dinner.

The ferry ride was pretty cool.

If you get seasick, then this will be a horrible experience. The Cook Straight between the two islands acts as a a funnel between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean.  Needless to saw there were giant swells. The rain prevented us from being able to go outside.

Just for reference, our ferry tickets were arranged through our camper van rental.

Stay tuned for our next stop!