South Island - East Coast

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We are heading across the Cook Straight to the South Island. Our check in for the ferry goes smoothly, which is more than can be said for the crossing – a blustery affair which requires an intense focus on the horizon in order to keep lunch down. We’re glad the choice of the now defunct catamaran - the vomit comet, as we’re told it was called, was not available to us. After a couple of hours, our Interislander ferry begins to navigate its way through the deep, and mercifully placid waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. The southern land seems to envelop us and draw us into its harbour, and we sense that nature will have a lot in store for us here.

We’re going to be making our way down the East coast this week, before heading inland. Boris’ first short drive is to Blenheim, where we will spend a night before hitting the wineries of the Marlborough region. It’s nice to be back in the van, and we cocoon up in our sleeping bags. Sleeping arrangements can be a little precarious – the slats of wood which transform what are normally two benches into a double bed are not a perfect fit. Iv sleeps on the dodgy bit in the middle and sometimes disappears in the night with an almighty bang, woken rudely with the feeling that he’s dropped a lot further than the foot or so from bed to floor. We always try and sleep slightly uphill which, depending on how we’re parked, means our heads are sometimes by the cooker and sometimes by the engine. Always good to keep things varied in the bedroom.

The next day Kate is treating Iv to a day of indulgence – we’re going wine tasting and she offers to be his personal chaffeur. Equipped with a map of the wineries, many of which are circled or starred to form a prioritised shortlist of venues, we hit the road. Iv is in Labrador mode – bright eyed, salivating, and not quite sure which direction to run in next.

The Marlborough region has become synonymous with world class sauvignon blanc – intense, full of minerals, and with a trademark zingyness and grassyness. The valley here has been created by successive floods and glaciers, leaving young land that is fertile, free draining, and stony. It also enjoys the highest amount of sunshine in NZ, making it perfect for growing grapes. It’s home to some of the top wine makers, ranging from those making upwards of half a million cases a year to the small scale family enterprises that only sell out of their cellar door. A good mix makes it on to our shortlist, and we head first to Wither Hillls.

The wineries are brilliantly set up for tasting sessions – many offer free tastings on their full range (some have a dozen varietals), others charge a nominal $3 or $5. Presumably, they make that money back from sales – we see many people buying bottles or cases after their tastings. Iv comes away with only rosy cheeks and notebook full of wines to look out for back home. Kate comes away with a rather exuberant passenger.

We enjoy a picnic in the grounds of Cloudy Bay’s vineyard, reflecting on the tastings. There are a few trends going on here – lots of organic and biodynamic viticulture; many wineries seeming to play down the New World wine characteristics that have made their region famous (“this is more subtle than your usual Marlborough sauvignon”, or “this Chardonnay won’t taste as oaky as you’d expect”); and lots of railing against the UK supermarkets, who squeeze the producers more than the producers squeeze their grapes. Even the big names tell us how a bad year can be made disastrous by a take-it-or-leave-it price dictated by one of our big four. It makes us think about how we buy our wine.

Iv’s favourite wines of the day come from a small, family vineyard – Te Whare Re, our favourite experience was provided by Auntsfield, and the surprise of the day came in the form of Pinot Gris - a wine we usually don’t bother with at home because it is so often boring and bland but today has proved to us that it is anything but.

Having visited several wineries, we feel its time to move on, and hit the coast road heading South towards Kaikoura (yes, Kate is still driving). It’s a stunning drive, with Boris cruising around bends that open up to give views of craggy bays on one side and dense bush on the other. It’s not long before we start to see the familiar sight of seals’ heads bobbing out of the sea water. We soon feel compelled to pull into a lay-by and take a closer look, and find a cluster of seals basking on some nearby rocks. The road behind us runs over a stream, from which we see two younger seals emerge and scamper their way across the shingles towards the grown ups and the sea. We cross the road and track the stream uphill through the woods for about ten minutes. And there we find an incredible sight - a pool of young seals dunking themselves under a waterfall. About fifteen adolescent seals who have obviously made their way upstream for some unsupervised mischief. For a while they seem oblivious to us, focused solely on their aquatic acrobatics. One lone fellow is sat atop a rock, striking poses. His nose points skywards and flippers are fanned out.....an aspiring star. We expect him to blow us a kiss any second. Then one of the others clocks Kate and decides she merits further inspection. He waddles out of the water and noses his way towards her. We gently step back and, after a while, retreat completely.

We soon reach Kaikoura, our destination for the night, and find there a campsite on the beach. We kick back, open up the van, and enjoy the strong sea breeze. We make grand plans for an early morning dip tomorrow. Lets see if they hold true, it’s bracing out there…

On waking, and reading a bit more about the area, we decide to take the swim in the sea a step further – and to swim with dolphins. After treating Iv to a tour of the wineries, it’s Kate’s turn for a blowout. Our weekly budget is tight, so we have to limit the tours or paid activities we do, but we decide we can afford for Kate to go for a dip with these creatures. Iv can join her on the boat for much less of a fee (and has a feeling that he might just find himself ‘falling’ off the back of the boat anyway, and thereby find himself 'accidentally' swimming with them too).

The decision is not an easy one for Kate. Her shark phobia equates deep, dark open waters with shark invested waters, so real bravery is required. She is spurred on by reading that dolphins can intuit when a woman is carrying a child, and will pay extra playful care and attention of such visitors. When we turn up at the tour operator’s reception we find that there’s one dolphin tour left, and that it has space for one swimmer and one observer. Decision made, and we hand over our cash.

We head back to the campsite to get our gear together (Iv’s shorts cunningly double up as swimmers), and return excitedly to the set off point. There, we hear the returners from the morning’s voyage speak of playful dolphins, whale sightings and as escort from a grand pair of albatroses. Kate is directed to get kitted up in the required wesuit and flippers. Then, with five minutes to go, the tannoy crackles into gear with an announcement cancelling our trip. The skipper had made a last minute reccie to find a strong southerly storm brewing 'out the back', and that it wouldn’t be safe to go. Gutted. To have something we’d built up and to believe was possible, only for it to be cruelly snatched away from us at the last minute … well, if felt like the rugby cup finals all over again!!

The storm is set to blow for a couple of days so we reconcile ourselves to finding somewhere else for Kate to swim with dolphins later on in the trip, and head back for the coast road. We’re soon thankful that we’re not out on the water which has become decidedly choppy and the wind is blowing a gale. We’ve been buffeted about by the crosswinds of the Severn Bridge a few times, but this is something else. Boris is not the most streamlined of beasts at the best of times. In fact, he’s a clunking van with a huge cheese wedge like block on the top. We wish it were a cheese with holes as the moment because we feel we might topple over, the gusts of wind are so strong. We hear on the radio that exceptional winds have blown people over in the street in the North Island.


We head south aiming for Lake Tekapo, a five hour drive that takes us down to Christchurch before turning inland. But we’d travel double the distance for the view we get when we arrive. Lake Tekapo is a village on the shore of the lake with the same name, and it offers the most beautiful vistas of a tranquil, vibrantly turqoise lake which stretches out 80km to the Southern Alps behind it. On the lakeside a small church sits on a small mound of land, offering arguably some of the best views. It has a huge window offering a perfect panoramic outlook – no stained glass needed here to make the incoming light any prettier. In fact, the pastor of this church would have a distinct competitive advantage over any fellow clergy in their attendee-to-convert ratio, with the aid of this awe-inspiring example of nature’s beauty behind them. Not sure their sermons would get much attention though.

There’s a campsite on the lakeshore and we find a pizzeria in town for one of our first meals out. A real treat. It provides sustinance for the next day’s walk.

The walk takes us up Mount John – a short but steep climb. It follows a woodland path and we seem to have the place to ourselves. The sun’s out and there’s a light breeze. After an hour we’re at the summit, circling the observatory at the top. There’s a great view of the lake, which lies in a trough between mountains, scoured by the Tekapo glacier in the most recent ice age. We’re presented with the choice of return trip straight back down the mountain or a two hour circular trip which takes us through some open country and a walk along the lake’s shores back to the van. We opt for the latter. Kate’s energy levels are generally quite low at the moment, with much being taken up by the growing bump in her tum. With trial and error we've found 10km to be the optimal distance for her. Enough to feel we’ve done a good bit of exercise and stopping short of needing to call the choppers in. We’re pleased – the walk is beautfiul. After descending the main peak of Mount John we enter rolling farmland, with hills you want to run down because you know you won’t be able to stop, butterflies lining the path, and a fresh wind to remind us we’re in the great outdoors. Kate has one of her classic pregnancy moments when Iv says “look at all these sheep” and she responds with “where?”. There are literally thousands all around us (it doesn’t quite beat her response to an enquiry as to how she found the surfing in Raglan…”It was so wet”).

Our legs are getting wobbly as we reach Boris, and we feel the contended satisfaction of a raised heartbeat, windswept hair, and tired limbs. We have our sandwiches in the van and head for Queenstown, happy.

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