As we continued our journey along the northern coast of New Zealand we were greeted once again by small towns and beautiful scenery. We stopped in Picton for a stretch and some gas, and we were once again able to walk the entire town in about an hour. They had an excellent grocery store where we bought ham and cheese for lunch. they also had an incredible imported beer section, but as we were in the van, we didn't want to buy more than we needed. Our fingers were crossed for said beer selection upon reaction Christchurch. With the rain once again making its presence known, we hopped back in the car and continued on towards Nelson. Nelson is considerably larger than any of the towns that we'd seen since Christchurch. It the town was large enough that we wouldn't really be able to cover the whole thing in a day, so we decided to stick to the downtown area. There wern't any particular attractions that we were looking for in Nelson, so we decided to stroll about and look for a good place for dinner. New Zealanders like their hard cider, as do Englanders from talking to our roommates, so we bought a litre to drink while we walked. It was slightly stronger than I would have like, and it tasted like watered down and carbonated white wine. We had cider in Dunedin and it was excellent. We walked around town, stopped in several shops and mostly just enjoyed walking. Nelson didn't really have anything special going on, although it did boast a large number of restaraunts. We stopped in a supposidly popular pub which was famous for its beer selection. We were the only people in it on a tuesday evening so it must not have been that popular. There were several beers that we hadn't tried and we were considering having a glass or two when the barkeep let slip that pints were $11! Eleven dollars! one could just about put a down payment on a house for that. We quietly let ourselves out the door after that. We played cards for a while on a picnic table outside another, less expensive bar before deciding to try Indian food for dinner. Several people, our guide book included, had reccomended a place called Mangoe's which was supposed to be a local favorite. We had a bit of a hard time finding the restaraunt, stopping to ask for directions twice. The first time we asked, a woman pointed us toward a building very close to where we were standing. Maria immediately said she saw it so we continued on. We walked past the building and I asked Maria where it was. She responded that she didn't know but didn't want to look stupid in front of the woman. And they say men don't like to ask for directions. I eventually found the well hidden cafe and we sat down to an excellent Indian dinner. Our bellies full, we decided to attempt to find Nelson's beach. We drove for several minutes in what we thought was the right direction, but ended up only finding a marina, which had to do for the time being. After the beach I made an executive decision and we went to McDonalds for ice cream. While waiting in the drive-thru we were shocked to discover that in New Zealand, a McDonalds ice cream cone only costs $.50! for the regular size! This translates to roughly 35 cents US. Amazing! This came as quite a shock as apple pies, which are normally two for a dollar in the US, are two dollars each here, outrageous I know, but thats the price one pays for travelling abroad. We drove, ice cream in hand, for several hours. Once again we were driving with basically no lights. There were no more towns and our trek through a somewhat windy and mountineous pass was rather frightful, if one is scared of those kind of things. We ended up not stopping until almost 11pm. We slept in front of someone's house yet again.
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