Picton

Jan 29 – I caught a cold a couple days ago so I stayed on the ship. Nancy walked into to town to check it out and found a very nice fleece jacket for cooler evenings.

Picton is a very picturesque place located on the northeast part of the South Island. The South Island is 56% of NZ’s land mass and has 1.2M people. The blue/green water looks incredibly clean. The whole area has deepwater channels and lots of coves. It’s obvious that NZ and the surrounding islands were formed many years ago as a result of volcanic activity. The land is very rugged with very steep shorelines. Most of the islands we saw were covered in vegetation (not necessarily trees), and had very little shallow water at the shoreline. The water gets very deep very quickly. Houses were few and far between. There very few roads, but we did see numerous coves with 2 or 3 houses and boat docks. The cost of construction must be huge. We had a lot of cloud cover early and then some sunshine in the afternoon.

One of many islands around New Zealand. Other than a city, this was the most cleared piece of land we encountered.

This is where we docked. The actual dock could only handle about half of the ship. Notice the ropes that a boat brought to the ship to anchor the front end. As you can see, this area is also a major supplier of lumber. Some of these neatly stacked piles of logs were 20-30 feet high. Look closely and you can also see a massive pile of sawdust behind the lumber.