Stewart Island - Day 9: Sunday the 1st of May

It’s been a great seven days on Rakiura / Stewart Island and I strongly recommend the island as a place to holiday, wild kiwi’s walking around Oban town centre, amazing stars in this dark sky sanctuary and on the Great Walk lots of native birds singing, yummy local food - all in all a magical place.

Beginning of the Rakiura Great Walk

A really super early start for everyone today, no drama for me of course as I am up around 6.30am like normal but it was strange to have everyone else up as well. So we all got to enjoy the lovely sun rising slowly over Stewart Island. At 7.20am Heath the manager of Akomana arrived to pick us up for our quick drive to the ferry.

Once I was at the ferry the realisation began to hit that we are going home kicked in, and it’s going to be a long day as we are all the way at the bottom of New Zealand. The ferry ride was a bit rough and poor Julianne struggled again but at least she had her ginger tablet this time. Whereas Stein and I spent the ride out in the open on the back of the ferry. If you pay all this money for the ferry ride, you might as well get the free roller coaster that goes with it!

Once back in Bluff, the bags were loaded into the bus and then a quick purchase of local Jimmy pies which uses mutton which is unusual buy yummy and then on the ride back to Invercargill airport.

We arrived at the airport with an almost three hour wait, but with a direct flight from Invercargill all the way to Auckland it is very convenient, plus it’s a large Air New Zealand jet so is quick once we are in the air.

The flight was uneventful and we were back at the airport with only a small drama as we had left a bottle of wine on the plane, so I had to go back through security to get it. We said goodbye to Stein and it had been great having him with us so we could catch-up, play card games and I could introduce him to one of my favorite types of holidays – tramping.

My father had arranged a barbeque at his house for the whole family for dinner, which was brilliant. So not only did we get to catchup as a family several weeks after the passing of my Mum which was great therapy but also Luke has been staying with my brother while I was away, and I had really missed him over the last week and I enjoyed catching-up on all his eight year old adventures; mainly the Sonic the Hedgehog movies which he is so excited about.

Then it was home to find a relieved cat happy to see us and to start the big unpack and clean for tomorrow is school for the boys and of course work for me.