The Gate way to the South Island from the Snout Hike |
The next town, Blenheim is the centre of the wine region for
Marlborough, where 75% of New Zealand’s wines are grown/made, not to mention
the home of NZ’s Sauvignon blanc’s. We
started our ‘tour’ with a trip to the local market. There we purchased fresh picked potatoes,
fruit and venison! We had a lovely BBH
accommodation, The Grapevine, on a river.
A lovely setting for a barbeque!
The wineries: our
mission was to find a wine to go with our venison! We started at Nautilus, of course. The wines were not spectacular, but the lady
behind the tasting counter gave us a list of other wineries to try. So off to Herzog’s for some awesome
reds. Many of their wines needed to be
put down for a few years and we are looking more for immediate
gratification! So we bought a Zweigelt,
to go with the venison. We need some
lunch, so we headed to Cloudy Bay. Now Cloudy Bay makes some awesome wines,
lovely to taste, but at $75 a bottle, a little beyond our range.
Back at The Grapevine we compared notes with some others who
had gone to several of the wineries. So
next day we started on a new list: Wither
Hills, after all, this was the name of our room, then Fromm, then Brancott,
NZ’s largest winery. At Brancott you
start by watching a video on the history and the making of their wines, it
finishes with voice over as the screen is pulled up and the vineyard comes into
view in front of you…….Heaven. Their
wines were also well worth the tasting.
We had lunch there, which was great, matched with wines, sitting
overlooking the vineyard. Our last
vineyard that day was Gibbons. This is a
winery done by a husband and wife. He
does it for love, and mostly Pinot Gris, as it is his favourite grape. A gruff man, making some great wines.
We had a lovely drive the next day to Greymouth. We stopped at White Creek swing bridge, paid
the toll to walk across and do the short walk on the other side. Aside from it being a gold mining centre, it
was also where the tectonic plates decided to make a move and the ground level
around the fault adjusted moved in one day by 5 meters! Luckily not the day we
were there. Back across the bridge and
back on our way through the Buller Gorge and along the side of Victoria Forest
Park. Beautiful scenery all the way.
Swinging over White Creek |
Greymouth Beach |
As we didn’t come into Greymouth via highway 6 we missed the
Pancakes rocks and Blowholes. So we
drove there the next day, truly a sight not to be missed.
PANCAKES ANYONE??? |
The topography was dramatic and we saw our first Weta, it is a bird. We lunched at a
restaurant back in town then back to Global Village to enjoy the hostel and a
glass of wine. Cheryl made up mincemeat
tarts and Karen used some of the left over puff pastry as a bed for a seafood medley,
very nice!
We took Highway 6 along the water until Hokitika. There we stopped to see what greenstones they
had for sale, to see if any stones spoke to us.
Basically it seems that everyone does the same traditional cuts, not too
many original pieces. So we carried on,
having enjoyed the stop. We stopped for
2 nights at the Fox glacier, and stayed at the Ivory Towers, not sure about the
name. We drove down to the start of the
walk to Matheson lake. This is one of
those iconic pictures of NZ, but you need no wind and clear skies to get Mount
Cook reflected in the water, but this was not the day for that, but a lovely
walk none the less. We booked a half day
tour on the Glacier for the next day. We
ended up in a group of only 5, one lady did not speak English. Which turned out to not be a problem as we ended
up with a couple from her country on the Glacier with us, what are the chances?
Haast Pass |
The next day we drove to Wanaka. The
road from Fox glacier to Wanaka takes you through the Haast Pass, which has
some amazing views. Our first view of
Lake Hawea was a call to lunch, as you really can’t have a better view for
lunch.
Lunch break at Lake Hawea |
Mt Aspire |
We did some provisioning and made a stop at the I-site. A lovely meal of barbequed Salmon, with an amazing wine and an amazing view. Next day we started fairly early for the hike to Rob Roy Glacier. It was a lovely walk with so many beautiful sights along the way. At the top the view was truly spectacular. A gentleman was taking pictures of some Kea sitting in front of him and flying around. The wife was showing Cheryl the pictures and she asked Cheryl where she was from. Cheryl answered Canada, but she lived on a boat, Interlude. The lady looked at me and asked Cheryl if we were “The Interlude”. It turns out that Cheryl was talking to Sue from Spruce, a boat we had not really met. We took their parking spot in Isabella, Galapagos and spoke on the SSB radio, but never met! I guess not so surprising really as Andy (of Spruce) said, most of the Pacific Fleet is in NZ!
Kea in the wild |
Spruce (Sue and Andy) meets Interlude |
No comments:
Post a Comment