To Picton and beyond

There are supposed to be 6 sheep to every person in New Zealand. We haven't seen that many sheep, but then we haven't seen that many people!
What we did see was some great looking coast that couldv'e easily been in Australia. A bit further on and the road really does hug the ocean. We pull over, almost randomly, right next to one of New Zealand's biggest seal colonies. It was right next to the road, it was raining and I couldn't even be bothered getting out of the car but we watched about 40 seals prance around for about half an hour whislt huge lorries past by.
We arrived at Picton which is mainly just a port town that everyone passes through to head to the North Island. It's a fairly lush place out of town and we followed an ultra winding road around misty green hills and past houses built on what looked like very unstable cliffs. It was like being in Magnum P.I. and I half expected to be picked up by some cool dude in a helicopter.
Quite a lot of houses around here are only accessible by boat, talk about being out of the way. No idea what they do for shopping.
We found another free campsite but the rain made it too boggy to drive on.
The area around Picton is called the Marlbourgh Sound and is just a collection of huge inlets of water that make it look like there's loads of islands around but they are connected to the mainland, if somewhat tenuously in places.
The 3 hour boat ride between the islands got dull after the first half an hour through Marlbourgh Sound. In the morning the low mist hung around the hillls and in the bays making the place look eerie and really good with it. It felt like we were on a film set and some giant croc would leap from the water. Nah, it's too cold.
After a 3 hour boat ride we had another 5 hours of driving ahead. We did have a bit of a look at the capital of New Zealand, Wellington. From the docks it looked grey and grim but once in the city it looked fairly modern and not bad. It was strange to see soo many people in one place again. A fair amount of business activity goes on here, judging by the amounts of suits and glass buildings we see, but it was back into the country for us.
It doesn't take long to get back into forests and gorges either. We passed the largest volcano in New Zealand, covered in snow, and realised the landscape here is quite different from the South Island. The hills look like something on a train set. Up and down all over the place and an almost fake green colour. Some of the hills are flat on top and this is caused by the speed in which they're created. New Zealand is a volitile land and has two huge plates beneath it pushing together. The flatness at the top of some hills is what used to be flat land below but got pushed up violently. It looks pretty damn strange and excellent. We're heading for the biggest lake in NZ, Taupo, but don't quite make it in a day. Instead we find another government campsite and stop in the middle of a lush forest completley on our own. Not too far from a large prison I might add(I'm sure I heard search helicopters during the night, I bet no-one would find us for ages if we were murdered out here).
Outside of the van at night it was soo dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, even when you eyes tried to adjust. It was the darkest place I'd ever been.
It was also a bit of a challenge driving back up the sodden hill to get off the campground the next morning. The incredibly narrow gate probably was trying to tell us not to drive down the steep incline but I did anyway. It took a few attempts of getting bogged down in mud but we made it. I wasn't looking forward to trying to push the van up anyway.
As we discover not only are there way more people on the North Island, there is also lots of strange steaming bubbling goings on.