Marlborough

Day 217

"Drink with me to days gone by
Sing with me the songs we knew
Here's to pretty girls who went to our heads.
Here's to witty girls who went to out beds.
Here's to them and here's to you!"

Sometimes I know I'm the luckiest guy in world. Every now and again comes along day that keeps reminding me of that. This time I had amazing 3 days in Renwick, heart of Marlborough wine region. I had already seen other major wine regions in New Zealand(Hawkes Bay, Otago, Martinborough and Waiheke) and I secretly hoped the most famous one would also be the crown jewel, it was!

But lets rewind the clock back few more days. After Christchurch I went to Kaikoura. Now, I wasn't exactly sure why I decided to stop there, maybe because word of mouth since many had been praising that place. Main attraction in Kaikoura is whale watching which I so was not going to do. I mean, come on, after Tonga and that Humpback breaching 30 times in front of our boat I wasn't going to waste my money on whalewatching trip where I could have a chance to observe whale's tail from 100m distance. So, I was planning on doing diving there since I was told that sometimes there is chance to have seals swimming along you during dive, that could have been pretty cool.

But emphasize on the word could. There were 2 reasons I ended up skipping diving. One was weather, for some odd reason the day I was in Kaikoura temperature dropped down to +14 and it rained all day. Other reason was Federer and Nadal. Hehe, their Australian Open final ended up lasting almost 5 hours and clock was 2:30am when it ended. Was it worth staying up? Hell yea! This is rivalry in tennis history that will be talked about years and years to come. Commentators and spectators will compare future matches and future players to these 2 individuals. This time their match wasn't as good as Wimbledon final but thrilling and amazing still. Some of the rallies these 2 did were just unhuman. Never ever have I seen tennis played like this. In my opinion Federer and Nadal are reason why serve&volley players have completely disappeared from tennis top level. Anyway, great match and way too little sleep after that :-D

Day after that I just decided to have a walk around Kaikoura Peninsula which I canceled midway cause rain just started to get way too heavy and headed back to hostel to watch Superbowl :-D I did manage to make it to Kaikoura's wild seal colony and grab one shot before I tucked away my camera to prevent damage to it.

On it was from Kaikoura to Marlborough and Renwick. On the road clouds turned away and New Zealand's most famous wine region greeted me with almost clear blue sky. I had 3 days in there so on first day I decided to do walking tour and check couple of wineries close by, 2nd day I booked full-day wine tour and on 3rd day I planned to rent a bicycle and go check whatever was left in area.

I think the wine tour topped all my expectations. For 74 dollars(thats about 30 euros) guide took us to grand total of 10 wineries during day! One being the famous Cloudy Bay(which btw is terribly overprized compared to other wineries in region). Wine tour was just blast again. I had especially good time with 2 irish girls(Schnaps factory was just hilarious visit). Whats with the irish? I have had some of the best memories during this trip with irish girls, go figure...

On last day I took bicycle out to visit yet few more wineries. My grand total ended up being 16 wineries during 3 days, not bad hu? What was fantastic about this area was the quality of their wines. There wasn't single bad winery and people in smaller boutique wineries were just fantastic. There was couple smaller ones(Gibson Bridge and Grove Mill) were I ended up chatting with the winemaker for over hour while he kept bringing me some of his more rare reserve bottles for tasting. I have been in quite a few wine areas and visited even more wineries so I can say that it was highly unusal. I guess they realised that I was actually someone who was actually interested in wines. Oh yea, and the landscapes were amazing there, but since this is New Zealand, that goes without saying.

Oh winery of the area award goes to Saint Clair with Te Whare Ra coming as runner-up.

Now I am in Motueka, yet again. I was here with Tuulia and Sami about 5-6 weeks ago for brief visit, but now that I have little more time I came here again to walk(and burn those wine calories) in Abel Tasman Park. Pics to come in next entry ;-)