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Published: October 18th 2007
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Saturday 8th October
Today we left the North Island and took the ferry to the South Island. Six of us, Becky, Sam, Sean, Stu, Kim & Me decided to leave the Kiwi bus for a couple of days as we had found a wine tour were you hire mountain bikes for the day. You’re given a map of the wineries and off you go. So we arrived in Picton in the South Island and jumped onto another bus to Blenheim, one of the main wine areas in New Zealand. We got off the bus in Blenheim & ended up having to walk 20minutes to our hostel. It was boiling and we had our entire luggage, it was hard work. We arrived at the hostel and to describe the people here as odd would be an understatement. The couple that ran the hostel were lovely, but the people that stayed there, well if you go back in my blog the only way I could describe them would be a cross between the people at Nimbin and those at Maclean. We checked into the hostel and then just chilled out in preparation for our day of drink driving on Mountain bikes.
So
we got picked up at 10am and taken to our mountain bikes. The guy gave us a map which contained over 30 wineries and recommended a route that would take us to between 10 and 15. We reckoned that on average we’d get between half and a full glass at each winery because you get to taste a few different wines at each one. It was potentially going to be a messy day! So we donned our helmets and after the pep talk of don’t get too drunk as you can get arrested, we set off.
The trip started on a good note. First stop was only 5 minutes away and as predicted we got to taste 4 different wines, almost a full glass in total, and there was none of this spitting it out, we’re backpackers, its free, you don’t waste it! If we carried on like this, it was going to make for a very interesting day. However on the way to the next winery Stu started fooling around on the bike and he rode up behind Becky, shouted Boo, frightened the life out of her, she lost her balance and thy collided and ended up in
a heap at the side of the road. They both had pretty badly cut knees and elbows and Becky hit her head pretty hard too, so we ended up sat on the side of the road for around 30 minutes, as I think she had a bit of concussion, she was white as a sheet. Lucky we were wearing helmets or it could’ve been a lot worse.
When she recovered we set off to the next winery, where they were really nice. They patched Stu and Becky up, and then we continued with the wine tasting. A couple of wineries later we arrived at Te Whare Ra, but when we go there it looked closed. We were just about to turn away when a guy appeared on a tractor. He was co owner with his wife and he said if waited 5 minutes for his wife to turn up he’d give us a tour and tasting. They were a really nice couple and told us all about why they make the wines they do. They are a small company and they sell out every year, but they didn’t want to expand as they had both worked for big wine
companies before and plus they has twin girls with 2 more on the way!! We decided to buy a few bottles from them and they let us sit on the veranda of their home and eat our picnics and drink our wine!
We took the bikes back around 4pm and as you can imagine by this point we were a little fresh, but what an awesome day.
The next day we had to pick the Kiwi bus back up again and after our 20 minute hike with our bags a few days ago we decided to get a taxi back to Picton. In Picton we jumped back on the Kiwi bus and met our new driver, Bods and it was off to Nelson and en route we stopped at another winery. We arrived at our accommodation in Nelson to find it was a pub, which put a smile on all our faces! We checked in then went for a walk up to a point which was the centre of New Zealand and had really nice views over the city. We then cooked curry for dinner and had one too many in the pub and for some bizarre reason,
Sam & I decided to have a pint downing contest. He beat me by about 1/8 of a second. I reckon there could be a re-match in the future!!
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