New Zealand: Nelson and Blenheim

Day 23: 2 December: Wellington - Nelson

Early start to catch the Interislander ferry. It would have been earlier still, but we had been informed earlier in the holiday by Beyond the Blue that the time had changed. This was because the propeller had fallen off one of the ferries, which had been big news, followed by the progress of the search - we heard they had found it on the bottom of the sea somewhere but recovering it might be tricky as it was very near an underwater power cable. Meanwhile they were borrowing a ferry from Holland, but of course that would take a while to get there, so the timetables were disrupted.

We did get breakfast though and met the other guests - another couple from Germany and a lady from Australia who was attending a conference.

Although Jane gave us instructions how to get to the ferry we still got lost. There is a distinct lack of signs telling you how to get to it, especially if you've gone wrong and you're not on the main road. We saw one sign in all the time we were driving around and only found it in the end because we stopped to ask someone. In the UK you always see loads of signs to ferries.

We just about made it after saying goodbye to our little car (another one was waiting for us on the South Island) and checking in our luggage.

Again Beyond the Blue had booked us a place in the Premium lounge, where they served coffee and food - breakfast, which we didn't need as we'd already eaten at Booklovers, but later there were scones and jam and cream. It was nice to have the lounge, but as it was a nice day we spent a lot of time on deck taking pictures. 

Looking back at Wellington from the ferry

The approach to Picton via Queen Charlotte Sound was beautiful. There were dolphins visible in the distance, and I thought I saw a seal.

Queen Charlotte Sound

The ferry arrived at Picton and we got a new car, a slightly bigger one - we could fit both suitcases in the back. Another Toyota and the entertainment system was the same so didn't have to waste time looking up how to get the music playing.

The Interislander ferry at Picton

It's a fairly long drive from Picton to Nelson on bendy mountain roads. Most of the lookout points were on our right and it was too dangerous to stop at any of them.

The South Island is much more mountainous than the North. I'm sure I could see mountains with snow on them in the far distance.

We got a bit lost finding our way to Clayridge, our next accommodation. Our instructions were a bit wrong. They told us to keep going on the SH60, but in fact the road layout had changed. The SH60 used to go right past the end of the road where it was, but they'd built a bypass, and that was now the SH60 and the road we needed was now the scenic route.

We were met by Marion, who made us tea. Her husband, Peter, was engrossed in mowing the lawn on his sit-upon mower and didn't realise we'd arrived. In this place we had a larger cottage all to ourselves - it had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a washing machine, which was very handy as we needed to do some laundry. We had a choice of bedrooms and went for the smaller one because we thought we'd get woken by the sunrise if we took the east facing larger one.

Clayridge

View from Clayridge

We had a west facing verandah and were told there were a couple of quails around. We think we saw them. We think they are the rather stupid birds which, when approached by a car, they don't fly away like all the others do, but they run away, in front of the car, and won't get out of the road.

The two best places to eat, we were told, were the Apple Shed and the Jelly Fish on the estuary. The Jelly Fish does a curry night on Tuesdays so we decided we'd save that for tomorrow, so we ate at the Apple Shed. It was a lovely location. We sat outside and looked at the boats moored in the estuary and watched the diving birds and gulls.

View from the Apple Shed

We went out there anyway to look at the stars and were startled by something growling in the bushes. Possibly a cat or something fighting over the quail's eggs, and in our heads we knew it was nothing that would be after us, but it was still a little scary.

Day 23: 3 December: Abel Tasman Cruise

Our hosts told us that we were probably going on a cruise with Rod Stewart today. Not THE Rod Stewart but someone with the same name who thinks it's a great marketing opportunity.

We set off for Stephen's bay where the boat was to pick us up, with three maps and instructions from Peter.

It would have been fine if not for the roadworks by the turning we were supposed to take, as their trucks obscured the sign to Stephen's Bay. Once we realised we'd missed it we turned round and went back, but when we tried to turn left we got shouted at by one of the workers who presumably thought we were going straight on and were not in the lane he wanted us to be in. He was getting very grumpy with his colleagues who couldn't be doing their jobs properly if there was a car in the left turn lane.

We rolled down the window and explained we wanted to turn left because we needed to be in Stephen's Bay for 10am - it was now 9.55. He was a right miserable jobsworth because, even though it would have taken just a few seconds for us to go through, he said we had to go to the other end of the roadworks and wait while they resurfaced that bit of road. 

We were convinced that we would reach Stephen's Bay just in time to see the boat sailing off over the horizon. I was wondering whether it would be possible to sue the roadworks company for the cost of the cruise we'd missed.

They let us through eventually, and the boat hadn't left. In fact, we were not even the last to arrive. We were not the only ones stymied by the roadworks. Our captain for the day introduced himself as Mike - not Rod Stewart then, but Rod did own the boat.

Our Abel Tasman Cruise boat

The small town at Stephen's bay was called Kaiteriteri. Kai is the Maori word for food (which made me think of all those people who name their children Kai...) and "teri" means fast, so "teriteri" means very fast, so the name of the town is "fast food". There was no McDonald's or KFC there, though.

We cruised past more rock formations. The iconic one in that area is Split Apple Rock, a large boulder split in half. There is a legend attached to it which is as follows: In the earliest days the Maori god of the land and the god of the sea could not decide in whose domain this big rock belonged. At high tide, it was surrounded by water so the sea god argued it should be his, but when the tide went out, it was surrounded by land and so the god of the land laid claim to it. The argument went on for some time and eventually escalated into a fight. One of the gods went for the other with a weapon and missed (or the opponent dodged) and hit the rock instead and it split in half. Presumably that solved their problem as now they could have half each.

Split Apple Rock

Another rock formation

There were four other people on the trip, two American couples, one from Minnesota and one from San Francisco.

The people on the Abel Tasman cruise

There was plenty of wildlife to see: penguins, seals, cormorants, gannets, oyster catchers, jelly fish and a sting ray. Part of the tour took us right up to a seal colony. 

In fact, if you love seals, New Zealand is a great place to go, because anywhere on the coast of the South Island there seem to be seals. The seals we saw today were by no means the last we would see this holiday. The dolphins, however, were not coming out to play.

The Abel Tasman National Park is the smallest national park in New Zealand, but is also the busiest, even though it is not accessible by road. You have to hike (or tramp, as they say in New Zealand) into it or get a boat, or one of the ubiquitous kayaks.

We made a number of stops - as well as the seal colony, there was an island called Adele Island which is a bird sanctuary. We stopped there to listen to the bird song. Mike told us that if we'd been there at dawn the bird song would have been so loud that we wouldn't have been able to hear him talk! 

Adele Island is a haven for protected species of bird because they have killed all the stoats and rats and things that eat birds or their eggs. It is safe to release kiwi chicks there so they can grow up in safety and then be released back where they came from once they are past the vulnerable stage. The scientists have calculated that the island can support 18 chicks at a time - it looked like quite a large island which appeared to have room for many more than that, but we don't know how they came to that total.

We stopped at a beach where we could get off and go for a wander. Mike said it was possible to find old Maori tools there and had some to show us, but all we managed to find was driftwood. There was a walkway there which had been built to look like a Maori canoe.

While we were exploring the beach, Mike had prepared lunch, of salad, ham, mussels, fish, olives and cheese and a glass of wine or beer or a soft drink. We all sat around chatting about skiing! Everybody on the boat was a skier and between us all we'd skied in most places in the world.

We made another stop where we could get off and do a bush walk, and so Mike could clear up the lunch things. Some spectacular views of the beach from the lookout points on the way. Arthur's new camera came into its own as he was able to zoom in on things on the beach and tell us whether it was a bird or a rock.

View of the boat from the bush walk

An oystercatcher

A New Zealand fur seal

We learned that the North Island is 90 miles from the South Island and can't really be seen from the South, except on very clear winter days when you can just about see the tops of the mountains.

The explorer Abel Tasman never actually set foot on New Zealand. He sailed up to the coast while he was looking for a route to the Spice Islands, which are nowhere near here at all so he was essentially lost. 

There were a bunch of Maori on the beach doing a haka. Not understanding what that was, Tasman's crew responded by blowing horns and beating drums and doing hornpipes: hey, the natives are showing us their dance moves, we'll show them ours! Naturally the Maori interpreted this as, "these guys are ready for a fight, too!" So when the landing party went ashore with peaceful intentions the Maori warriors killed them. Tasman gave the spot the name Murderer's Bay and sailed away.

Nevertheless, despite being there by mistake and never landing, he still got a National Park, the town of Tasman, Tasman Bay, Tasmania and the Tasman Sea named after him. Not bad going.

Arrived back at Kaiteriteri. The roadworks were gone. Called in at the liquor store for some wine to drink on the verandah.

We ate at Jelly Fish, taking advantage of their curry night, although the curry I ordered was actually on the regular menu. When we left, the sky was blazing with another spectacular sunset so took a few pictures of the estuary and the boats bathed in pink light.

Sunset in Nelson

Day 24: 4 December: Nelson

A day "at leisure" to explore the town of Nelson.

WoW Museum

A big attraction there is The World of Wearable Art and Classic Car Museum. Classic cars speak for themselves - they had a large collection including some of those huge 1950s American cars that are the size of a small bedroom, and I couldn't help commenting that it would be fun trying to get one of those up Wraxall Hill (the steep, narrow bendy one near our Somerset house). There were really old 19th century cars, one that could have been chitty chitty bang bang, several Mini Coopers, a Rolls Royce, a Reliant Robin (with Del and Rodney's logo on it but I can't believe they'd have the original all the way out there) and Austin Powers' "Shaguar". 

I felt really old when I saw they had an Austin A40 which is what my father used to drive all through my childhood! Arthur has been very fond of pointing out, ever since, that my parents' old car is in a museum!

The wearable art section arises from a contest for fashion designers that started in Nelson although it has since been moved to Wellington as it grew more popular. The challenge is to produce art that can be worn, albeit just for a few seconds on a catwalk.

On display were some of the costumes which had won awards at the contest over the years. They had a dark room where glow in the dark costumes were on display and a kind of mechanised carousel made to look like a catwalk, with dummies dressed in the outfits suspended from the runners and going round and round. The clanking of this contraption wasn't quite drowned out by the avant-garde musack they were playing. The overall effect was slightly creepy.

If you threw a burlesque cabaret act, a circus, modern dance, Doctor Who and the Alien Bar from Star Wars into a blender and mixed them all up the result would resemble the World of Wearable Art. Photographs were strictly forbidden so I can't post any examples.

Gary from the Manse had recommended some places for lunch in Nelson and we found one of his recommendations and ate there. It was called the Boat House. As you might expect, it was on the water and we sat outside watching some guy trying to learn to windsurf. He got a bit wet.

We paid a visit to Nelson Cathedral which is a grey stone building with an interesting spire. Every year they have a Christmas tree festival and that was in full swing while we were there. About 25 trees, decorated by local groups in their own style were on display. The Sugarcraft Society had made all their tree decorations out of icing; the embroidery group had embroidered theirs; the flax weaving group had flax ornaments and so on. Some of the trees veered away from the traditional pine tree with things hanging on it theme. One was made of bleached driftwood with shells and bits of driftwood hanging on it, and another was made from folded paper.

Nelson Cathedral

We wandered round and chatted to the volunteers who seemed exactly the same kind of people as the volunteers you'd meet in UK Cathedrals, except with different accents.

Stopped for coffee in an arty café which had an exhibition about a woman artist who belonged to one of those tribes who place rings around their necks. I was reading all about her and later saw her talking to someone in the street. I'm sure it was her - there can't be that many people in Nelson with those rings round their necks.

We looked at the shops - Arthur had left his sunglasses in the Hop Garden and although he had been in contact and they had agreed to send them on, he won't get them until Queenstown so he needed a pair to keep him going till then. There were some interesting shops and I bought a few souvenirs.

Tonight we went to a nearby town, Matueka, and found a restaurant there called Elevation. While the location wasn't anywhere near as idyllic as the previous two evenings, the food was excellent and the staff very welcoming. Although it seemed to us that they couldn't quite decide whether they wanted to be a restaurant, a bar, or a coffee shop.

The church next door was being converted into a goth bar, which would have been an interesting place for a glass of wine afterwards; but we were several months too early.

Day 25: 5 December: Nelson - Blenheim

Drizzly rain this morning. A shitty day in paradise, you could say. There was just a short drive from Nelson to Blenheim. Our guide book was somewhat dismissive of Blenheim as having no tourist attractions whatsoever, but since Beyond the Blue have given us a couple of days there there must be more to it than that!

Marion and Peter recommended that we visit a museum dedicated to WWI aircraft which is on our way. They have some quite clever displays there with the planes looking as if they are actually in flight. For example, one had smaller models of the same type of plane suspended around it to give the illusion that it was part of a formation. They even show one plane in a tableau crashed into a tree! 

Exhibits at the air museum

They have created scenes with wax dummies in WWI uniforms, including the Red Baron's fatal crash. They had a lot of information about the dispute about who actually shot him down in the end - the prime suspect was proved to have been too far away and they really don't know who actually did it. (Although everyone knows it was Snoopy - that's what the song says!)

We drove on to Blenheim and Brookhurst, where we are staying. Our hosts here are Helen and Brian. This is another boutique hotel with water features in front and a nice garden rather than a view. It was quite tricky to find. We followed our instructions and they took us down a short cul de sac. We were looking for number 36 but the house numbers only went up to 10 - then we saw the cunningly concealed driveway in the trees where several more houses were nestling, including Brookhurst.

Brookhurst

Helen welcomed us and invited us into the garden for tea and home made cakes, while telling us about all the things we can do in Blenheim. She mentioned the aircraft museum. "I've sent the other couple there," she said. We told her we'd done the aircraft museum already. She was chatting in general about the other couple who are staying here and they sounded suspiciously like one of the American couples who'd been on the Abel Tasman cruise.

Helen and Brian have a lovely little dog called Theo who loves it when people throw his ball for him. Very stressful backing the car out of the parking spot though, as we had to be sure we could see where Theo was, and were always quite relieved when we saw that Helen had picked him up!

Theo

Looking at our driving instructions to the various places I noted with some dismay that there are only 3 sheets of paper left.

We ate at a place called Raupo, which was recommended. Brian drove us there in his Jaguar after our pre-dinner drinks and nibbles. It was in a very nice location by the river but Arthur didn't like it at all. I think he chose the wrong things to eat. He didn't like his risotto or the wine. I thought the wine was OK, although not as nice as some we'd had, and wonder if the combination of that particular wine and the risotto was not the best. He's been going on about how disgusting this brand of wine is ever since. I wonder if he'd have been happier with the restaurant if he had chosen a different main course and different wine. Or even just a different main.

View from Raupo

We walked back - it only took 20 minutes or so, even allowing for photo stops in their square which had a floodlit fountain.

The fountain in Blenheim

Day 26: 6 December:  Blenheim

The other couple did turn out to be the people from the Abel Tasman Cruise, as we'd suspected. On the cruise they had kept themselves to themselves and we'd mostly spoken to the people from Minnestota, but in Brookhurst we got to know them a little better. They are doctors in San Francisco, quite young, and very well travelled. Also pretty fit - they had elected to go cycling around the wineries today.

We, however, drove to a chocolate factory (basically a chocolate shop with a window so you can see three or four people busy making chocolate. We tasted a sample which was lovely. Even Arthur, who doesn't usually like sweet things was well impressed.

Literally opposite the chocolate factory is a winery (St Clair) and we went over there for a quick wine tasting. Chocolate and then wine - the two major food groups covered in less than half a day!

For lunch we went to another winery, Geisen. They have a crest with a ship, the Southern Cross and a swan on it. The crest is supposed to represent their journey to New Zealand. I can see how the ship and the stars fit in but the swan is a bit of a mystery. Even the staff couldn't explain it.

We ordered a vintage platter to share. It included smoked mussels, cured meats, cheeses (the blue cheese was especially delicious), pate, salmon paste, salad (with particularly tasty cherry tomatoes). This was all washed down with a glass of their wine.

There are wineries everywhere in this area, Marlborough, one of the famed wine areas of New Zealand. However, there is a limit to how many you can sample as they are not close enough together to walk between them so somebody has to drive. Probably the best way to get the most out of Marlborough would be to take a coach tour. Some of the wineries look like something out of Dallas and others look like industrial factories.

After lunch we went to the local museum which included a wine exhibition we had been told was very good. We went in and there were no staff on duty whatsoever. We hung around for a bit expecting someone to show up but nobody did so we just went in. The wine exhibit was interesting and so was the local history. When we came out the receptionist was back. Because she hadn't been there before she only charged us one admission fee.

Outside there were some old shops, a railway station and a vintage fire station you could look around. The shops weren't open but you could peer through the windows and see old fashioned radios and things inside. Brian told us later that on some days of the year, they open up all the shops and volunteers in historical costume show people around.

There was a museum of vintage farm equipment but Arthur didn't want to look at that - he didn't think there would be anything he hadn't seen during his childhood summers in Ireland.

Went back to Brookhurst and were offered more tea and cake and again pre-dinner drinks - Brian is a wine buff and likes to share his favourites with his guests.

While we were chatting to Helen, there was a prime example of how the New Zealand accent can lead to confusion. They pronounce vowels differently and what they say can sometimes come out like an entirely different word to the British ear.

"Australians are bitchy," was what we thought she said. When we enquired whether "bitchy" means something different in New Zealand we realised that what she had actually said was "Australians are beachy" meaning they like going to the beach.

Some of the misunderstandings could potentially be quite embarrassing. On the cruise, Mike was telling the story of how his neighbour had a bird that used to sit on his patio, or "deck". In New Zealand, an "e" as in deck is pronounced like an "i" as in bit. So when he said his neighbour had a bird on his deck it sounded quite funny - lucky we'd been listening to the conversation and knew the context!

On another occasion we overheard a man asking hotel reception to order him a taxi for 18.00 and it came out like "I want it for sex".

Tonight we ate at Herzog's winery. Again Brian drove us there and we got a taxi back. The driver was a chatty chap who told us his life story. He'd lived in the Canary Islands for a while.

Day 27: 7 December: Begins in Blenheim 

Before leaving Blenheim we visited one more winery - the Brancott winery. It has a visitors' centre. As you park your car a man drives up in a minibus to take you up to the centre. From the visitors centre there is a sweeping view over the vineyards, which spread out almost as far as the eye can see, to the distant hills and the sea. It's said you can see the North Island from here on a clear day, but not today.

View from Brancott winery visitors' centre

We tasted some of their wine and we learned that the little red building you can see from the window is used as their logo and appears on every bottle of their wine. They do export to the UK so we'll be looking out for that! 

The little red building from the Brancott label