4 Day Update

WOW - Here is your 4 day update. We were in the sticks for a while. Also, I fixed the Akaroa Photo Album link (thank you Kate for catching that). We love reading your comments - keep em coming.

March 1: Heading North

It was hard leaving Hanmer. We really enjoyed the town and the people. We drove through Lewis Pass and made one stop at Mauria Falls to take in the views. The next stop was the Hidden Cafe and Sculpture Walk which was tucked back off the road. Strange little place with a walk around a pond filled with odd sculptures. We had our afternoon coffee and pressed on. Arrived at Motueka, where I had made a tentative reservation at a B&B in town. We passed by the place and said "I don't think so." So now what??!! Went straight to the I-Site and a very nice woman found us a place to stay for 2 nights in a cottage on a farm at Marahau - much closer to our kayaking site tomorrow morning. We booked the cottage and a full-day kayak, walk trip in Abel Tasman Park for tomorrow morning. The cottage is great!! Two bedrooms and a full kitchen. This all for the same price we would have paid for the creepy place in town. We have lots of room to spread out. We finally cooked our first dinner and sat in peace and quiet and watched the cows go by. Of course, there is no wifi let alone cell phone signal. So here we sit, eating frozen yogurt, watching the ice skating exhibitions from the very last of the Olympics (still do not know who won what). Today was chilly and cloudy most of the day. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring sunshine for our kayak.

March 2: Find it! Do it! and We Did!

It appears we are either donning helmets or life jackets - today it was life jackets. Woke up to an overcast sky and drove down to the beach for our kayak/walk trip. What we wound up with was not exactly what we had signed up for but we went along with it anyway. We had wanted to kayak first and then do the walk with the water taxi taking us back. As it turned out, we water taxied to Torrent Bay and tramped up and down the rugged coastline of Abel Tasman Park taking one detour up to Cinderella Pool. That was pretty crowded when we got there and was not worth the time and trouble to hop the rocks to join the crowd. We were told to be at Watering Cove (which should be around a 2 1/2 hour walk) at 12:30 for lunch and then pick up the kayaks.That being the case, and being the good doobies that we are, we walked at a good pace to get there on time. I felt a bit under the gun, especially with the foot that only cooperates when it wants to. The walk was mainly through rain forest-like terrain with some hills except towards the end when we headed straight up where we started to get some cool views. Right about then, we were thankful for the cloudy skies. Of course we made it to our meeting spot with time to spare. There were lots of folks hanging around and very little beach. The tide was coming in fast. We found our leader, Lena who was bringing in the group that kayaked first and she wanted to get them fed before dealing with us.  We had to wait for the rest of the folks we were going to be kayaing with  to arrive by water taxi. In the meantime, we were famished from our hike and finally talked Lena into feeding us and not waiting for the rest of our group who didn't show up until around 1:30!! So glad we rushed to be on time.  While we were hanging around waiting, one water taxi pulled up and dropped off 2 people. Lo and behold it was the young couple, Torben and Marina, from our Doubtful Sound cruise. This country is getting smaller. They had signed up with another tour group so they weren't kayaking with us. It was good to see them again though.

By 2:00 we were altogether and almost in the water. Since this was a guided tour there was a lot of instruction and we were with some kayak newbies. Next time we will just rent for ourselves and go! Once we got going, the sun finally broke out and we had a very nice calm 2 hour paddle back to base. When we neared the end, the tide had gone all the way out. These are full moon tides so they are pretty extreme. The folks that run these tours and taxis get the boats and kayaks pulled out to the water by tractors. Check out the photos. It is pretty bizarre to see all these tractors running around spewing diesel fumes - while they advertise eco-toilets!! We wondered around the town for a bit and considered making a reservation in one of only 2 restaurants. We both voted for leftovers from last night's chicken dinner back at our comfy cottage.

It is now cocktail hour and it is quite peaceful. We are tired and happy and looking forward to Blenheim. Not quite sure what we will do there. We could bike and do the vineyard thing or maybe explore Picton, which is supposed to be real nice.

March 3: On the Road to Blenheim

Glorious blue skies and sunshine! We took our time leaving our happy little cottage and our cow friends. Before heading to Blenheim, we made a stop down at the beach and spread a bit more Jerry B. around the Tasman Sea. Fortunately, the tide held out and we were able to get to the water without worry.

It was an interesting drive east. We jumped out to take some photos of a local bowling club holding some sort of tournament. We had seen "Bowling Club" signs all over and asked one of our pub encounters what the sport was about. We gathered it was a lot like Italian botche ball. Our next stop was to get rid of some morning coffee, we pulled into a small town called Canvastown with the Trout Hotel and some monument to the gold mining era. The scenery wasn't anything too special. We blew past Nelson, which I think was a nice town that sits right on the water and offers a lot of "to do" things. We stopped at Havelock. This is the green mussel capital. It really wasn't until we hit the Queen Charlotte Highway to Picton that the wow factor kicked in again. This has got to be one of the most zigzagiest roads we have ever been on, going up and down and up again. Every time you think you hit bottom the road heads up again. The views were amazing and we kept stopping for photo ops. By the time we finally got into Picton, we were starving for lunch. Grabbed a sandwich and ate on the harbor. Since it was such a beautiful day, we decided to take advantage and do a couple of track walks out on the Snout, taking the Bob's Bay track out and the higher Harbor Track back. At the end of the track, sat a docked schooner from the early 1900's, that had been turned into a cafe/bar. We popped in for our afternoon coffee - it was absolutely beautiful. They did a great renovation job. After coffee, it was time to head to Blenheim. I called our ATC hosts to let them know we were on the way.

Blenheim sits right in the middle of wine country. We are surrounded by vineyards and our hosts own a cherry orchard as well as a vineyard. We arrived late in the afternoon and Jill & Ken greeted us. After chatting for a while, Jill made a reservation for dinner for us at Rocco's in town. When we got there, we soon realized that this was not the place for us. Remembering that Jill had told us of another eatery down the road by the airport, we headed for the Argosy. It turns out that the Argosy is the name of a plane, which sits right in front of the restaurant. We had the best meal we have had since we have been in NZ. Seeing as how we were so close to the mussel capital of the country, we had the green mussels for starters, which were done perfectly. Then we shared the venison over rice with a mushroom, shallot, and wine sauce with vegetables. Geoff ordered the bailey's cheese cake with ice cream just to top it off. We were there so long, the woman who owned the place gave us a bag full of muffins because she couldn't sell them tomorrow anyway. Before we took off, we went up into the old plane. You have to see the pix of this. It was wild. Then we sat in the passenger seats and watched a movie about history of the Brisbees fleet and the final flight.  They retired the plane in 1990 and this is the last remaining one in the world.

Cricket is on downstairs and Geoff has made himself at home with the family in front of the monster TV. I am up here in our lovely room typing the days log. No wifi here. Not sure when and how I am going to post all of this.

March 4: Biking in Blenheim

Helmets today. Collected our bikes at the shop in town center of Belheim. Surprisingly, Blenheim has quite a bit of bike trails both paved and off-road. Our plan was to take the off-road trail for a bit and then turn up towards a vineyard, have lunch and then take the road back with a stop off at the infamous Aviation Heritage Center. Such was the plan. The reality turned out to be much different. After biking on dirt and gravel for quite a while, there were no real signs that actually meant anything. We had three maps and we couldn't figure out any of the them. We even tried to get directions from folks we passed and we kept getting different versions of how to get where we were going. After a few hissy fits, we decided to turn around and went up on the first road we came to, which happened to be the one with the wineries. Yeah!! You get free wine tastings in this part of the country. Wither Hills Vineyard was first. I tasted a few wines but they were all booked up for lunch. We continued on the road - stopped at Villa Maria and ran into 2 young kids doing the wine bike tour. No lunch here either, but the kids had a map and said to go down to Highfield Vineyard for lunch. Off we went for another 8 or so kilometers. Some more tastings and a wonderful lunch high above the vineyards.

Taking the same road back, we headed straight for the Aviation Heritage Center. This is a collection of WWI war planes and memorabilia that was started by Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings. I'm not one for being a war buff but the exhibit was amazing. Very lifelike. The best for me was the crashing of the Red Baron. Of course, they had a cafe so we had our afternoon coffee. We learned that if we head out in back of the center it will hook up with the bike trail.

Away we went. Well, the woman said straight but you couldn't go straight. There were fences everywhere (mainly for the sheep). Spotting the dump across the way, which we had passed several times earlier, we knew we had to be over there. There were just 3 fences between the trail and us. What the heck! Let's do it! So we (Geoff, actually) hauled the bikes over the fences and styles and we were finally on the path back into town. We took it out as far as we could and then turned back toward town to return the bikes. Going through town center, we walked through Seymour Square which was quite nice with beautiful flower arrangements. The bikes were back by around 4:30 and we walked around town some more. We are now nestled in our room taking it easy before dinner. Today was our last full day on South Island. In the end, we had a great ride with lots of sunshine and breezes to keep us cool. Miraculously, we got to see everything we wanted.

Another great dinner at Argosy. There was a meeting there tonight. A group of engineers who were assembled to see some aircraft down at the naval airfield came to the restaurant for "nibbles". They were great fun to watch and listen to. I think I can plug into the computer downstairs and get this off tonight. See you all on the North Island.

Tomorrow - the ferry to Wellington and the start of the North Island tour.