The Snout and the Tombstone

This is looking back at Picton from the Snout.  The gorse is in bloom again and the sun was out, electrifying the water.

This is the best view we have had of the Sounds.  The Interislander ferry is taking one of it's several daily trips out of Queen Charlotte Sound, across Cook Strait, and into Wellington.  We just booked our tickets today and will be on that boat in a little more than a week.  The other day the ferry was canceled due to the 11 m swell in the strait, that is more than 30 feet.  Apparently they cancel if the swell reaches 7 m (20 ft.), we are hoping that we don't get a 6 m day where they are still sailing with 18 ft swell.  
The Coffin door of the Tombstone, "world famous in New Zealand since two years ago."
The Tombstone is named for the cemetery across the street, the hostel is the grey building across the road.  The address is 16 Gravesend Pl. and below the street sign the is another reading "No Exit", nice work there.  
Lynne, on the left, and Gordon have a wood fire pizza oven and often do pizza night for the guests.  Since we are "wwoofing" she did it all for us, including a bottle of wine.  It really was the best homemade pizza I have ever had.
Pizza night with the other "wwoofer", our new friend, Anne from Germany.
Snowflake is one of the two cats living at the Tombstone, the other is black.  Snowflake is deaf and therefore a very unique and hilarious cat.  She is not afraid of noise so she plays with the vacuum and leaf blower, etc., and she meow's louder than any other cat on the planet.  We call her "Snowflaken", a mispronounced version of her German name that Anne gave her after another British wwoofer couldn't get the German right.

We only have a week and a half left before we leave for Auckland.  This might be our last blog from NZ.  Thanks for reading them all year, we can't wait to see you all.

Love, 

Johnny and Mae

The quaint town of Picton

The town of Picton and the harbor.  The big boat out on the water is the interislander ferry which we will take to get back up to the north island.
The harbor in Picton, on walks around the harbor we've seen dolphins playing with sailboats.  They are awesome to watch jumping out of the water and racing with the boats.
The courtyard of the Villa, we spent a lot of time in the hot tub and Johnny spent too much time on the x-box that sits to the left of this picture.
The Van we drove to pick people up from the ferry.  No power steering and tricky shifting!
The Villa, an old victorian home which now has nicely trimmed roses thanks to Johnny.

Well our time in New Zealand is dwindling down, less than a month until we fly to Tonga, an island south of Fiji.  The last month we've been cleaning at the Villa, a hostel in Picton.  Johnny's been doing maintenance work outside and I've been making beds and cleaning the hostel inside. We live and work with 5 other people which has been fun and at times frustrating.  We cook for everyone once a week and serve the famous apple crumble to the guests every night.  We've met some really neat people and we are looking forward to singing karaoke with all of them tonight at a local pub.  Tomorrow we are starting at a new hostel in Picton that is much smaller, Johnny and I will be the only cleaners and we don't have to clean any bathrooms, which I'm pretty sick of cleaning.  We'll be there for 3 weeks and then we'll head up to the north island to fly out.  We'll be home before we know it!

Veltrousten (which we learned from our funny dutch friend, it means good night, unfortunately that is the only dutch word I know)

Maegen