Day 10 - Waitara

We arose around 6:30 am, wolfed down a little food, then departed.  There was little traffic until we were almost in Picton, so we made good time and arrived
relatively early.  We ended up sitting in line behind a chinese family with a seemingly endless (over 30 minutes) tantrum from the youngest son.  Fortunately, both coffee
and benches on the side were available.  We boarded the ship towards the head of the pack due to our good positioning from arriving early, and Jen quickly grabbed a bench
long enough to lie down on and took a nap.  Seas were quite calm, and the trip was pretty effortless.

Once we left the ship, a long drive lay ahead of us.  Despite Nick's reassurances that there was "four lane highway all the way" it quickly ended up as the two lane roads
we'd grown accustomed to.  We were able to see the mountain from a long ways off due to the clarity of the weather and sky (100 km) and the large cone dominated the skyline
of our journey.  We arrived at our hotel, the Cottage by the Sea, and found the accomodations modern and the overlook gorgeous.  We ate a quick dinner at a place the owner
suggested, where Nick was elated to find actual ranch dressing to accompany his chicken tenders.

We found the local grocery store had closed too early for us, though, so we returned to the cottage and had a stroll down the beach, where we found calm water and a 
reasonable assortment of shells and sealife, which had been noticably lacking at Kaikoura.