Dec 28th & 29th & 30th - From Taupo to the South Island

28th December

Waking up after the Tongariro Crossing, we all felt a little stiff, but there was no stopping Matt and Jo who headed straight for a crazy high ropes course just north of Taupo. After a quick belaying lesson, they were off, negotiating some alarming looking challenges – walking along logs and high wires about 20m in the air. Thankfully I was on the ground as resident photographer capturing their achievements on film.

When they were feeling confident at their aerial abilities, Matt and Jo tried the trapeze jump which involved leaping from the top of a ridiculously tall log to reach a trapeze above them. Matt managed to cling on, but complained about aching arms for days afterwards. Jo did manage to grab it, but sensibly opted not to cling on thereby saving her upper arm muscles!! To top the morning off, they braved the high swing which was a plummet followed by a bungee style rope swing – a little too much whiplash inducing for my liking!

Following this rather adventurous morning, we drove into Taupo for a bite to eat before driving out to Huka Falls on the outskirts of town. The Huka Falls isn't in fact a waterfall, but is where a massive amount of water is forced from a wide river into a really narrow gorge – causing some incredibly strong currants and white water. We spent some time considering possible routes through it in a raft or kayak, before deciding that it was significantly safer on land! We also tried to play “Pooh sticks” but the water was just too strong for us to monitor our own sticks.

When we could drag ourselves away from the Falls we began our long drive down to Wellington ready for our ferry to the South Island the next morning. Whilst the drive was several hours long, it passed really quickly – both because of our spectacular in-car renditions of Les Miserables classic tunes and because of the beautiful scenery.

29th December

It was up early the next morning to travel the final few kilometres into Wellington to the ferry terminal. After a slight disagreement about whether we had booked a ticket for the car (quite easily sorted out) we loaded up onto the ferry and found out way out to the deck to admire the view. It was a beautiful morning – blue skies, sunny, warm for 7.30am and without a breath of wind (very surprising for windy Wellington). The ferry crossing was incredibly calm and the views, especially as we cruised through the Marlborough Sounds, were spectacular. The only disappointment was the quality of the coffee.

Once off the ferry in Picton we rapidly drove down to Blenheim in order to check in to our motel and prepare ourselves for the afternoon activity: Wine Tasting. We were picked up by a little minibus and whisked off to our first winery of the afternoon. On the way we picked up 3 fellow wine tasters – they had been at it since 11am, and were very talkative and merry. Through the afternoon we visited 4 wineries: Cloudy Bay, Nautilus, Forrest Hill and Villa Maria, tasting between 4 and 8 wines at each stop. Pamela and I were giggling by winery number 2, and I rapidly gave up drinking all the wine (Matt covered for me by drinking his sample and then mine). It was a fairly large quantity of wine overall, and most of it drunk very quickly. Pamela seemed to particularly enjoy a number of the fizzy wines, and spent some time looking organised and efficient finding out who the UK supplies were and what it would cost to export (there were mentions of wines for the wedding…). We came away with 1 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, 1 of blubbly and 2 Pinot Noir, which I think is quite controlled considering the usual purchase-encouraging effects of alcohol. Of the full-day wine tasters 2 outdrank us all (they had the tolerance of elephants!) whilst the third started vomiting in the back of the minibus – very classy!

Back at the motel we were struck down by a severe case of the munchies, and an emergency supermarket shopping foray was rapidly undertaken by Pamela and me. We covered all the necessary food types – crisps, dips and chocolate – before retiring to the motel for a quiet evening and some sobering up.

30th December

The advantage of early afternoon drinking was clearly demonstrated by the complete absence of hang-over this morning. We made a leisurely exit from Blenheim and started the scenic drive down to Kaikoura (about 100km). On our way out of town we passed kilometre after kilometre of vines, some of which were obviously young – clearly the wine business in this area is still growing.

About half way down to Kaikoura (which means place to eat crayfish in Maouri: Kai = food, Koura = crayfish) we came out onto the coast, and the remainder of the trip was along a windy coastal road. The scenery was spectacular and there were multiple sightings of fur seals.

We arrived in Kaikoura late morning and having been unable to book a Whale watching trip (they were all full for the day) we headed down to the beach (a 2 minute walk from the motel) for a picnic. Once again it was a glorious day – blue skies and lots and lots of sunshine. Kaikoura describes itself as the place where ‘the mountains reach the sea’ and the views were stunning. Whilst we were on the beach a pod of 10-15 dolphins swam by and Matt and I headed in to the water to take a closer look (it was only later that we read that it is a very dangerous beach with bad undertow and rip currents and swimming isn’t recommended – luckily we escaped without drowning). The dolphins found us very interesting and spent about 25mins swimming around us, getting close to check us out and then swimming away at speed. It was amazing, especially because we were the only people in the water, and there were only 2 other people on the beach beside Pamela. The dolphins were very small with rounded dorsal fins, we later identified them as the very rare Hectors dolphins. We were suddenly very glad we hadn’t been able to get on the Whale Watching trip.

Eventually we left the dolphins to it – they were obviously just spending the time cruising up and down the beach and weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere. We then headed out to the Kaikoura Peninsula for a look at the seal colony and a walk. The walk took us along the cliff top of the Peninsula with amazing views back towards the mountains and up and down the coast. Despite being after 4pm it was still very hot and sunny. For the return to the car park we cut down from the cliffs to sea level and came back along at sea level. We passed 2 bird colonies – hundred of red-eyed gulls on nest with plenty of fluffy chicks and brown-speckled young birds, and a seal colony as well as a gaggle of geese (!) and a few snorkellers out catching supper (mostly paua – a NZ shell fish, also called abalone - I think).

We decided that it was time for a nice dinner out and got a recommendation for a sea food restaurant just outside Kaikoura. After delicious prawns, chowder and venison (not sea food I know) for starters we then had the entertainment of watching Pamela tackle half a crayfish for a main course (with intermittent ‘I’m beginning to freak out’ and ‘somebody cover the eye’ and ‘look at all those legs’ comments). The food was delicious (ending up with a sumptuous backed cheese cake) and the wine very tasty – Kim Crawford Pinot Gris, a local Marlborough wine (Matt had generously volunteered to drive). All in all a fantastic day.

Jo