The amazing hitch

After having a rough and sleepless night at the airport, we woke up early and getting ready long before our morning flight.

At 7:15am, we went the check-in counter which was also the bording gate for soundsair, shared by few other domestic budget airlines. We were told the flight was delayed due to the bad weather. It was raining heavily and very windy. At one point, we were told that we would be de-tour to Blenheim instead but there'll be a shuttle to send us to Picton. We were less worried about the detour as there's another route to get to Westport from Blenheim and it wasn't any further than the one from Picton to Westport.

Finally around 9.30am, the flight arrived (from Picton or Blenheim I supposed) and we started boarding on. It was those small craft with only 14 seats, including pilots'. We took the two seats right behind the pilot where the control panel could be seen clearly from behind. We thought we were lucky to have the best 2 seats. Turned out, the flight was full and there were total 13 passengers. In the end, one lucky bastard (pardon me I still couldn't get over the jealousy) got to sit BESIDE the pilot in the 'assistant pilot' seat!!! All yd and i could do was staring at the lucky girl in hostile and drool in jealousy from behind. She was obviously all hyped up (but who wouldn't?) and couldn't feel our watchful eyes and piercing stares.

why didn't you pick me? Why?

view from the craft

funny how the cows would gather around the 'bull eyes' in the center

It was only 25 min short journey compared to ferry ride which would take 2.5 to 3 hours. However I got a bit sick after a while and was thankful when it finally touched down at Picton airport. It was actually more like somebdy's farm with a runway behind the property. And the only transports were the soundsair shuttle. I had not booked for the shuttle service thinking I could take public transport! I was prepared to pay on the spot but were secretly feeling joy when we were never asked to show anything to get on board. And there we saved ourselves 10 bucks or so! :p But I must mentioned this, the van has greater capacity than the plane itself!

soundsair plane and shuttle

We arrived in Picton and found the town a lot smaller than we had expected. We brunched at a local pub restaurant and the food was tasteless and not cheap but we didn't really get much choice in the small town. After having our stomachs filled, we started our hitch-hiking day.

Welcome to Picton, the first town we arrived at in South Island

The distance from Picton to Karamea, West Coast, our farmstay destination, is some 400++km. The coach from Picton to Westport is $55 pax. And from Westport to Karamea is another $28 pax.

We estimated about 2 days to get there by hitch hiking. However we didn't really have all the luck hitching. We spent the day hitching short rides from Picton to Blenheim, then to Renwick, where we waited 2 hour with no luck, then walked a kilometres or 2 to another side in Renwick and hitched to Havelock, then to Nelson. Made a big round and only progressed little. By the time we arrived at Nelson, it was already in the evening. We checked into a backpackers, who was kind to give us backpackers discount when we were not members. yd used his charms on the receptionist and surprisingly it worked! Anyway having a tough luck at hitching, we decided to take the earliest bus to Westport tomorrow morning, and try to hitch from Westport to Karamea.

After we did the calculation we realised that we hadn't saved much:

Picton to Westpor by coach: $55 pax, total $110

Nelson to Westport by coach: $39 pax, total $78

Bummer!

However, lady luck hadn't totally ditched us either. Later that night when I called Bill to inform him our whereabout and our plan to arrive in Westport the next day around mid day, he told us that he happened to be going to Westport tomorrow and that he could pick us up! Yeah!

It had been a long and tiring hitching day but we managed to make it in time arriving at the farmstay as planned!

hitching point at Picton

the vinyard opposite our hitching point outside Renwick

vineyard

hitching with a hand-written sign beneath 'when wet' sign

the traffic was so scarce yd could walked to the middle of the road and take this pic