Jade carving workshop 
One of our creations 
Our trip has been built around a few highlights that we wanted to see, but often influenced by the people we met along the way. We were chatting to the owner of the cafe at Manapouri before catching our boat for the Doubtful Sound cruise, and she assured us that we absolutely must go to Stewart Island. She recommended that we stay in Bluff and catch the ferry across the following morning. She also recommended the backpacker accommodation there. Since we hadn’t planned our next destination, we thought we’d give it a go and booked a night at the only accommodation we could find in Bluff – the Eagle Hotel, and a couple of nights at the Stewart Island Backpackers.
The Eagle Hotel was an interesting experience. It was a Monday night and everything in town was closed and the proprietor informed us that the hotel dining room would also not be open. We resigned ourselves to having a drink at the bar and then snacks in our room for dinner. We met Charlie in the bar who was there with his mates and family on his annual ”onion run” from Ashburton. Some time later, the hotel proprietor came and told us that he was now expecting a truck driver in for dinner and that he had to feed him as they always looked after their truck drivers, and would we like rib eye for dinner? They opened the dining room just for us (I don’t know where they fed the truckie) and the rib eye was delicious.
The ferry ride was a little boisterous but nothing for us seasoned sailors, even so, a number of passengers were sick all the way over. We’d heard that the trip can be very rough but we were lucky.
Stewart Island was beautiful but cold and wet. The island businesses were obviously geared up for summertime tourists only and were surprised that they had so many visitors at this time of year. Quite a few places were closed. Since the weather wasn’t great for hiking or bird watching (the main tourist attractions), we decided to do a “carve your own jade” activity run by David Goodin, a very accomplished artist and jade carver. We chose our pieces of rough stone from Dave’s collection and a design that we liked, and Dave guided us through the process of cutting, shaping and polishing our pieces. It was a fantastic experience, I highly recommend doing this if you are at all interested in jade.