We continued our journey clockwise along the coast of the South Island, winding through spectacular mountain views the whole way. The mountains here come closer to the water than anywhere else I've ever seen, making for spectacular scenery the whole way. We stopped for one night in the quiet town of Picton, which really didn't have a lot going on. The major highlights were more chocolate pudding at our new hostel (the sister hostel of the other), playing giant chess, and enjoying the hot tub. As much as I loved the giant chess pieces, about a foot tall each, it was actually Adam vs himself with me helping to vary the play by switching sides every two turns... my sister taught me chess by explaining the rules to me as she used them to beat me, and I've never been very good at it. One other noteworthy occurrence: when we went shopping for dinner, we had it in our minds to get something easy like a frozen pizza. In EVERY brand of pizza, at least 3 separate ones, the ONLY two varieties of pizza we could find were Hawaiian and Supreme! Nobody even had a plain old cheese pizza!
After another short coastal drive through beautiful scenery, we got to Blenheim, New Zealand, the wine capital of the country! There are over forty wineries open to the public in this region, and many more that don't have tasting rooms! Our ultimate plan was to rent a tandem bicycle and bike from winery to winery, but rainy weather kept this dream from becoming a reality- poor Adam drove us around while I sampled all the wines. To be fair, I drove us around in Nelson while he sampled all the beers, and I did make sure to share any outstanding wines with him. We went to at least ten different wineries over the two days we spent wine tasting; some were excellent, some were terrible, one was just downright rude. But overall, we'd highly recommend spending some time in this area if you like wine! Many of the tastings are free, several of the tasting rooms are architecturally interesting (one winery was even in a church), and the acres and acres of vineyards enclosed by mountains make for beautiful views in every direction.
Of course, visiting wineries isn't the ONLY thing to do in Blenheim! We also went to the rather snooty Moa Brewery, walked along a beautiful trail along a river in a Blenheim public park, went to a "car boot sale" (rummage sale), and slacklined with a Belgian hippie we met at a different park. Then there were our hosts in Blenheim, Peter & Monika, with their son Jeremy and their menagerie of animals! They had goats, cows, ducks, chickens, peacocks, two very cuddly cats, and even a magpie! Not to mention their house was located a bit outside of town on top of a hill with a spectacular view in every direction and the scariest switchback driveway I've ever seen. They were a lot of fun and an excellent New Zealand perspective, being some of the only native kiwis we stayed with on our trip.
After Blenheim, we made our way to Kaikoura, an oddly-shaped peninsula sticking out of the coastline, and probably the prettiest town we visited in all of New Zealand. The snow-capped mountains in Kaikoura come right up to the beach- they're so close! On the way, we stopped to see a seal colony, and we saw more seals in Kaikoura- these guys are HUGE! In Kaikoura, there are no fences and you could just walk right up to a seal if you wanted to, but there are lots of signs warning to stay at least ten meters away- they bite. Again, we had rain in Kaikoura, so we took a day of much-needed laundry and rest. The rain just served to make the mountain scenery even more crisp the next day!
Finally, we made our way back down to Christchurch for our last night in New Zealand (for now!). We felt an earthquake at 3:30 AM when we had to get up for our flight- I was glad we hadn't felt any until our last day! Even on the plane out, the scenery was amazing. Definitely my favorite country on the trip so far!
Check out the newly added South Island, New Zealand picture album! I'm also going to update the photobucket links to see if I can get them working.
No comments:
Post a Comment