Port Nelson

Nelson is a pretty sweet little place, with happy hippie kiwis, loads of backpackers, a nice atmosphere, a bustling and still industrial harbour, cute cafes, parks to hang in, walks to do, museums to visit. Quite the change from Havelock's population of 400 people.

We've been doing the tourist thing, the art museum is more recommendable than the local history, the japanese park isnice, so is the look-out point, and otherwise we recommend just strolling around. Accent on the park was the first place to be friendly and have beds, and we're quite happy.

And concerning that port that I mentioned, I've been looking for a ship to crew to go to Fiji in May. Trying out findacrew turned up a lot of lonely 40 and 50+ skippers looking for a queeze in the cabin of their nutshell boat, while I'm rather looking for a decent stable ship and an experienced captain who want sto swap sailing experience for good cooking and no further benefits.

Instead of looking for the needle in the virtual haystack I got lucky in real life and found the boat Alvei docked in the business side of the harbour. She's a schooner type, and her captains sails her as a non profit cooperative sailing school more or less. They're bound for Fiji beginning of April and need some more to crew the boat. I think I'm going to jump at that chance, and have already found a place to store my bike - the nice guys at Stewarts bike shops are saving the day once again. That means of course that the biking is postponed a bit, and I'll return to NZ sometime after Fiji in June or July. It'll be quite interesting to see what the weather is like then and if biking is even a remotely comfy option of transport.

Me and Madeleine will though first go for a little roadtrip, packing only the very basic - I feel rather intimidated by leaving both tent and sleeping bag behind, but there are hostels where we are gong and the plan is to hitch ride, which is a lot easier when you carry less. We've got a couple of days in Abel Tasman to kayak and tramp on daytours, then heading up to Collingwood and the Farewell sandspit, seeing where luck takes us , then head back to Nelson early next week. I'll board ship then and practice knots, setting sails, navigation and such on and Madeleine is going further down south to explore New Zealand.