| New Zealand South Island: Nelson |
| on to Westland ...or |
| A large portion of the next day was spent futzing around travelling. We dropped off our rental car, got our tickets and checked our bags, got on a ferry for 3 hours, disembarked in Picton, picked up our bags, picked up our next rental car, and finally were on our way by around 2 in the afternoon. Our trip on the famous Interislander was particularly uneventful and wasn't even spectacularly scenic. Fortunately it wasn't too rough either, so no seasickness to recover from. A good thing since we were about to drive through New Zealand's premier wine region! Now it should be pointed out that New Zealand and Australia seem to do be conversely talented in brewing and vinting. Australian beer is as spectacular as new Zealand wine, which doesn't say much. It was nice to hit a few of the local wineries to see what they had on offer, but from then on, I woudl definitely take full advantage of the brilliance that is the New Zealand brewing industry! |
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| We only made a quick pass through Marlborough on the way to our overnight destination of Nelson. We only stopped at 3 places along the main road of the wine trail. the first was Prenzel distillery, where they make their own liqueurs and some limited spirits. They seem to specialize in an irish cream that they were giving sample shots of mixed with their butterscotch schnapps. Frank bought a sampler of a few of their other schnapps and we were |
| on our way to Huia Wines. This was a small local place that only sells through their cellar door. Their whites were nice enough, so we bought a bottle to drink some evening later in the trip. I also took a picture of what the area looked like (pic above right). Not the most picturesque place in the country, but nothign to sneeze at either! From there we stopped at Nautilus Wines. These are those nasty little creatures that we saw in teh aquarium in Townsville. This winery does a big export business to England and apparently is popular. I wouldn't have thought it was anything to write home about, but the woman who was serving us was really friendly and entertaining. She even started passing along the latest town rumour that Elijah Wood had recently bought a place in the area... |
| We then travelled through a valley and through some mountains. As was the case on the North Island, some of the best parts of our day were just the views. En route to Nelson, we managed to get a photo of that Colorado-style river view I described in Tongariro (pic right). We also had to start restraining ourselves from taking photos out the window of the moving car (although on occasion we couldn't resist, but |
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| got lucky and got a good one).Our arrival and evening in Nelson was actually pretty uneventful. We got ther ein time for the little town to shut down. So we hopped in the car, drove the 15 minutes to the seaside suburb, and found ourselves the area's most popular seafood restaurant: The Boat Shed (which is exactly what it was). The mussels here were supposed to be excellent and cheap. One out of 2 wasn't bad! We were lucky to even get served without a reservation (we ended up eating at the bar) and had some fantastic meals paired with some new beers. |
| We had the whole next day to explore the region, so we decided to spend our time checking out Abel Tasman National Park by sea. We booked ourselves onto a water taxi that would take us from one end to the other picking up and dropping off passengers at the various beaches along the way. When we got there to pick up our tickets the beach was packed, the sun was shining and I was sort of regretting that we hadn't decided to take one of the taxi & hike package trips. We ended up being very happy with our choice because the clouds rolled in and it poured rain for the last 2/3 of the 3-hour tour! Our prime seats in the driest area of the boat made the trip enjoyable, although still chilly & damp. People were stranded at various beaches with kayaks, desperately trying to find a water taxi with room to take them home, and those who had booked in to get dropped of at one beach and hike to catch the taxi at another were also less than content when they hopped back on... Anyway, this is a general flavour of what the marine park looked like - big lush hills with little beaches scattered at the bottoms (pics below)! |
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| There were two stops along the cruise that were not passenger loading realted. We stopped at Split Apple Rock first. It is a circular shaped rock that is split evenly donw the middle and sits there sort of defying gravity (pic below). We also stopped at a rocky little island known for its little NZ fur seal population. I haven't posted a picture because I got better ones |
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| elsewhere and how many seals do you guys really need to look at? That took up the main part of our day. We had slept in and doen some grocery shopping that day, so we had a nice carpet picnic and a hot bath awaiting us back at the hotel... I actually felt a bit unfulfilled as we left the Nelson region. We hadn't covered much fo the ground there, even though it was more spread out than anywhere else we had been so far and the weather had definitely been against us for the full day we had to spend there. As we drove away I was looking ot make up for it along the west coast! |
| Frank & Lisa's Amazing Aotea/Kiwi/NZ Adventures |
| Northern Territory: Red Centre , 2 / Top End , 2 NSW & ACT: Hunter Valley / Sydney / Canberra , 2 Queensland Coast: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 South Australia: Barossa Valley / Kangaroo Island / McLaren Vale & Coonawarra Victoria: Great Ocean Road , 2 , 3 / Melbourne New Zealand (North Island): Aukland / Rotorua / Tongariro / Wellington (South Island): Nelson / Westland / Queenstown / Milford / Dunedin / Mt Cook / Christchurch |