4th February 2019 – Nelson

The day started reasonably early as we needed to leave the hotel around 8.15 to get to the airport, via a petrol station, drop off the car etc. before our flight. We were in good time and our car was brought round, but, it had a flat tyre! We tried ringing Avis at the airport, but no answer - probably too busy with other people! The main office didn’t open until 8.30 and the number to ring for roadside assistance said they would charge $65NZ so the concierge said he would happily change the tyre for us! Bargain! And he knew what he was doing! Half an hour late we were on our way, a bit stressed and wired as the hotel had very generously given us coffees whilst we tried to get it sorted.

Having got to the airport there was then the issue of the flat tyre, as well as the chipped windscreen that had happened very early on - the result of road resurfacing work that we have encountered on many occasions! So a lot of paperwork, and maybe an extra bill to pay 🙄

We made the flight in time and it was only a short hop over to Nelson. 25 minutes across the Cook Strait. However short flights mean small planes! At this point I was going to insert a photo but the wifi is so poor here it won’t upload it. You will have to wait!

An afternoon spent wandering around this very small city, and getting sorted for the next 2 weeks. Tomorrow we meet up with our group for our trek. We have no idea if there will be any opportunity to get onto decent WiFi, and so my friends you may have to get used to no daily update from the Wilsons on tour!! Those of you that have signed up to the website we think get a notification of a post, but for the rest of you I think you will just have to check in every so often. We are due back in Christchurch on 19th February and if there has been no WiFi I will have a lot of writing to do! I may have to revert to that very old fashioned method of writing with a pen in a notebook to keep notes!!