We arrived in Blenheim on Monday around lunchtime. We knew we wanted to check out the
Marlborough wineries while we were in Blenheim, but otherwise we didn’t really
have an agenda. Our first stop was at
the town information center, where we were able to book a wine tour for the
next day. Next up, we had to figure out
lunch. The bartender, Derek, at the
Portlander in Wellington told us we should have lunch at the Brancott Estates
Heritage Center, because of the amazing view.
We were out of groceries and needed to go to the store, so our first
thought was that we should take care of that and just make sandwiches for
lunch, but instead we decided to put it off and go to the Brancott
Estates. After all, you should never
grocery shop on an empty stomach, right?
I tried to use our trusty GPS device to navigate us to the
restaurant, but because it’s so new, the address wouldn’t pull up when I typed
it in. So, we were left with the old
fashioned map that we got from the information center in town. We knew it was near the airport so we took the
turn down the road that led us in that general direction, eventually we found
the correct road and made a left turn.
We found it. We turned into a drive that led us through field after
field of grape vines. Atop a ridge just
ahead of us was a modern building with large glass windows perched narrowly on
the edge of a hill. We parked and made
the steep walk up to the Heritage Center.
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| Charles driving in Marlborough wine country |
We walked in and I felt instantly under dressed. One thing about this type of travel is that you
have a very limited outfit selection.
This restaurant was the type of place where I would normally want to
have on nice jeans and boots with a cute sweater and scarf, my hair fixed,
makeup on – basically showing I had some interest in my overall appearance. Instead I was un-showered, with my hair in a
ponytail, a smidge of mascara on, and the same jeans, Brooks running shoes, and
fleece I had been wearing for weeks. Oh
well, it was wine tasting time, so no point in focusing on my atrocious
appearance.
We sat at a table, with a beautiful view of the vineyards
and mountains and our waitress greeted us.
She told us the specials of the day, they all sounded wonderful, and
overly indulgent for a lunchtime meal. I
decided on their salmon dish and Charles went with their fish of the day, which
was Monk fish. After we ordered our
lunch, our waitress suggested we go over to the tasting counter to sample some
wines. We started of course with a Sauvignon
Blanc which was wonderful. We learned
that Marlborough’s sunny warm days and cool mountain nights are what make the
Sauvignon Blanc grapes do so well in this region and make the wines they
produce so full of citrus fruit taste.
Next we tried a Chardonnay, which we both really loved. They don’t make many Chardonnay’s in
Marlborough, but this one was wonderful and buttery. We also tried a Pinot Noir, which was also
very good, it is the other grape that grows very well in the Marlborough
region.
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| Wine tasting at Brancott |
After our tasting we went back
to our table and waited for our food to arrive.
As she set the plates in front of us I knew we were in for a good meal,
the food was beautiful. Charles and I
both agreed that this was definitely the most gourmet meal we have had since we
left Los Angeles. After lunch, we took a few photos and then went to find
where we were parking the campervan for the night.
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| Lunch at Brancott |
We checked in and decided to go into town to
get food for dinner and check out the center of town. We walked around the shops and squares to see
what the town had to offer. We stopped
in Seymour Square to hang out for a bit, Charles worked on a painting and I did
a little writing. Then, we wandered back
through town towards the Ark II. After our run to the grocery store we loaded everything in
the fridge and compartments and headed back to the holiday park. We have gotten used to the fact that almost
every holiday park has movies to rent, so we were surprised to find out that
this particular holiday park had no movies at all. The campervan is pretty quiet dark and there
isn’t much to do in the way of entertainment at the holiday parks, so we have
come to look forward to a nightly movie.
The woman working at the holiday park recommended a movie store down the
road, so we drove down to pick something up.
We were happy they loaned movies without a membership if you were
willing to put down a $10 bond. We
picked out two movies since we were planning to stay two nights in Blenheim, we
chose Contraband with Mark Wahlberg and Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and
Paul Rudd. We watched Contraband the
first night, which was a great thriller/action movie.
Tuesday morning we had our usual breakfast of muesli, yogurt
and fruit with coffee. Then we headed into
town so Charles could get a haircut. After
his hair cut we went into a shoe store to look around. I only brought my running shoes and a pair of
ballet flats and was hoping to pick up a cheap pair of shoes since it’s a
little too cold on the south island for ballet flats. I found an inexpensive pair of boots and was
quite happy. We went back to the holiday
park and got ready to go on our wine tasting.
We were picked up by Jonathan with Bubbly Grape Tours at
noon. There was one other couple doing a
half day and then we would be joining five others who were on a full day
tour. Once we had everyone assembled we
began our drive to the first stop, Spy Valley.
I was really excited to go to Spy Valley, because it is one of my
favorite Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs to buy at home.
Spy Valley is in a valley that houses surveillance satellites
that are part of the Echelon project, hence the name. We learned that the estate uses lots of
little plays on the fact that it is in this unique valley – they have a wine
called Echelon and they have Morse code on all of their bottles. The wine was really good, all of it! It was definitely my favorite stop of the day. As we were leaving we looked at the display
cases near the door and were surprised to see that Spy Valley wines won awards
at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Wine event. Next we went to Giesen wines where we had
some more good wines. Then we stopped
for lunch, I had a great pumpkin and goat cheese panini – delicious! Then, more wine tasting this time at
Bouldevines. Of course our favorite of
all the wines we tasted were the sauvignon blancs – each winery had several
different ones, since that is what Marlborough specializes in.
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| Spy Valley |
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| Spy Valley |
After all that wine tasting we decided that our plan for the
late afternoon evening would be pretty simple – make dinner and watch a
movie. So, we made dinner in the
campervan and watched Wanderlust. It’s
hilarious. If you haven’t seen it I
highly recommend it. The next morning we decided to do a hike that Johnathan our guide on the wine tour suggested. It was great, it offered amazing views of Blenheim and the ocean and we got to see tons of sheep, lambs, and cows.
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| Hiking in Blenheim |
After our hike and some lunch in the campervan we set out for Kaikoura, which is a small
town on the east coast of the South Island that is known for whale
watching. We had heard from Derek at the
Portlander that we could see baby seals in a waterfall just north of the town,
so that was high on our priority list.
We arrived in town in the late afternoon and went straight to the center
of town, which consists of one main street that is about three blocks
long. We went into a few shops and got
suggestions about things to do in town, and learned again about the place to
see the baby seals. We stopped into
another shop to check out winter clothing, because it was freezing in
Kaikoura. Charles got a fleece which has
been a great purchase because the South Island is much colder than the North
Island. We went to check into our
Holiday Park and decide on our plan for dinner.
We found the Top 10 park and checked in and decided to walk into town
for dinner instead of cooking. It was
only about a 5-10 minute walk into town, and although it was freezing, it was
so nice to be able to walk instead of drive the Ark II into town. We found a pub called the Whaler and settled
in for dinner by the fire.
The next morning we got up to go see the baby seals. We drove the Ark II back up the coast a bit
to the Ohau Seal Colony. There is a
Department of Conservation trail that takes you up a stream to a waterfall,
when the seals have pups they take them up the stream to the pool at the bottom
of the waterfall while they go out to sea to feed. We started the hike and began seeing seal
pups playing in the stream. Then we got to the top and there were dozens of
seal pups playing below a huge towering waterfall. It was amazing. It was like watching an exhibit at the zoo,
except we were in nature and we were standing five feet from the seal
pups.
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| Baby seal pup jumping |
That afternoon we planned to get lunch and find a place
where Charles could do some painting and I could do some blogging. Since Kaikoura is known for crayfish (or
lobster as we would call it in the U.S.) we thought we should make sure to have
some while we were there. Kaikoura means
“meal of crayfish” in Maori, so it was a necessity. We had asked in town where we should go and
everyone said to go to the Original Kaikoura Seafood BBQ, so that’s where we
went. It’s a food stand on the side of
the road just outside of town. We had
crayfish fritters for lunch and Charles had their seafood chowder, it was all
wonderful. We sat outside at the tables
next to the food stand and enjoyed the food, the fresh air, and the view. Afterwards, we got ice cream! Ice cream is huge in New Zealand, they talk
about it on the radio all the time, so we had been wanting to get some for a
while and we finally found a good spot.
It really was delicious.
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| New Zealand Ice Cream in Kaikoura |
After our ice cream we decided we should get on the road and
stop somewhere along the way for Charles to paint. Here is the spot we chose:
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| Afternoon stop in Kaikoura to paint and write |
It was a little cold, but it was worth it because the view
was so amazing.
Next up Christchurch....
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