Picton

picton was a stopover on the way to the Queen Charlotte track. i was drunk most of the time i spent in picton – for some reason i only understood there is nothing to do in the towns in new zealand after leaving the south island. as soon as i got to picton i realized that A. there’s nothing here B. i want to go on the heaphy track and C. i don’t have a bag liner and my bag is going to spend a lot of time thrown on a wharf somewhere along the track.

i had a couple of hours to book the heaphy track in an internet cafe, book the transport to and fro the heaphy track [400 kms of driving, three different bus companies and four busses] and look for a bag liner before going on a wine tour. these were probably the busiest hours of my time in zealand. luckily i had a nice woman in the i site to help me, unlike the nasty worker they had in the DOC office. but time was running short and we did not complete booking all of the busses. i thought i could use intercity, so we booked the rest of the transport. i was then picked up for the wine tour.

you probably do not want to drive yourself on a wine tour. we met some people touring on bikes and their ride was pretty wobbly. there was a weird american couple, two older couples and another lady in her thirties. they were a lovely bunch. half of them spend the morning drinking wine, a pretty good head start. nonetheless, being small and compact my drunkenness levels caught up with theirs pretty fast. we went to four wineries, had about a glass to a glass and a half of wine in each. i got a really nice bottle of ice wine [drunk it on my own on the Charlote track] and pretended i was drinking elf draughts. [i was reading LOTR at the time. i read them all by now, and i'm reading the third one for the second time, for lack of better reading material. i am planinng to get a pipe and some tobbaco and smoke a pipe on one my next tramps. i already feel like a hobbit when i'm tramping anyway - heavy rucksack, usually not enough food and lotsa mountains to climb, not to mention i did go to mt doom]

by the time we got back i called intercity and found out i had no transport, no liner, no hostel after the heaphy track and i had a boat out to the charlotte track at 9am the next morning. oh, and i was supposed to go to the heaphy track the morning after i got back from the heaphy.