Sonoma

This morning we caught The Interislander. It's a ferry that took us on the 3-hour journey from Wellington (in the north island) to the Picton in the South Island. The weather, as in San Francisco, was night and day. Wellington was cold and windy, while the northern end of the South Island is warm and sunny. The town where we're staying, Blenheim, claims to be the sunniest place in New Zealand. If Wellington was the San Francisco of New Zealand, then we've definitely found the Napa Valley in Blenheim.

We've been feeling that we're driving too much. So, we're planning to cut that down significantly and *slow* down. The realization came that there's 1-year's worth of stuff to see in New Zealand and we only have 6 weeks. We have to book it a bit to Christchurch so we can make our Ballooning trip on the 23rd (http://www.ballooning.co.nz), but after that we're going to chill a bit. We started the "calm down" today by hitting a winery outside of town and having a few glasses of wine in the sun. I've also started a personal, symbolic contribution by sleeping in an extra 45 minutes while Shandelle showers in the morning.

We've also discovered a new segment of the backpacker market. These are the "week-to-week backpackers" who have come here with the plan to backpack for a long period, perhaps a year or more. They manage to run out of money within 4 or 5 months of their stay by blowing it on liquor and expensive sites. They then flock to places like Blenheim so they can work their way through their trip.

Sadly, there are so many of these folks that migrant labor wages around here are pathetic. They make the equivalent of about $4US an hour in the fields. To put that in perspective, the cheapest rooms at the hostel here are $20NZ a day or about $10US. The week-to-week'ers are invariably malnourished (or have that fluffy appearance that you only get by eating unhealthy/high-calorie food), drinking cheap beer, and eating pork and beans straight from the can. One quaint young Scot informed us that he had 40 cents to his name until payday -- three days away. He arrived last May and ran out of money in September. You're only young once, I guess.