We were supposed to drive to Picton to take the ferry to Wellington today. However, the inter island ferry service isn't working as expected. Firstly, they are still working through the backlog of cancellations caused by the cyclone (fully booked for atleast a month). Secondly, they had a couple of ferry breakdowns & scheduled service, so, out of the regular 6 ferries, only 3 are currently taking regular passengers, while 1 (the one we were supposed to take) is freight only until futher notice. Based on our limited chances to actually get a ferry crossing before our flight home departs Auckland on the 6th, we figured it was better to drive down to Christchurch and catch a flight up to Wellington instead.

With a limited amount of time in Christchurh we managed to make it to the Botanical Garden for lunch and a quick stroll though the gardens before heading to the airport.

It's sad that we didn't get to sail through Cook Strait, but I bet it wasn't better than Fiordlands that we already seen!
The flight only took 1 hour and we got out last great views of the South Island for this time. And funny enough, when decending into Wellington, we could see the ferry we originaly booked making it's way towards the North Island with it's freight only load. (If you find it looks familiar it's because it used to be a Stena ferry for a while).

Once in Wellington we got a taxi to our hotel that turned out to be just as awesome as the pictures on the website (that's very very rare). We found a Malaysian restaurant nextdoor to the hotel and got some really good food before we settled in our room.