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Published: February 22nd 2007
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The Queen Charlotte Sound
The route the ferry comes in (taken from the Queen Charlotte Track) Hello again everyone and sorry that we've been so bad at keeping up with our blog. We had a bit of a shock recently to discover that it was nearly the end of April and we only have one week in New Zealand left - our time in the South Island has gone so quickly! We have therefore spent quite a while on the computer writing and uploading photos and will be bombarding you over the next few days with a series of blogs.
This first blog of the South Island covers the period from 9th February to 22nd February where we were mainly in the top of the island and mostly doing two things: drinking wine and playing scrabble.
The most interesting thing we have discovered on the scrabble front is that the plural of octopus is not octopi. However, you can still play this word in a game because it is listed in the Chambers dictionary along with its definition - 'not the plural of octopus'. You can of course also play octopuses if you like. (We found this in our beginners scrabble guide, which is no doubt the best book we've bought!)
Ferry trip Queen Charlotte Sound
On a not quite so sunny day! to the south island
We caught an afternoon ferry from Wellington on the North Island to Picton on the South Island where we were again lucky to meet up with our friend Elanor. The ferry passes through the Queen Charlotte Sound yielding some wonderful views of the South Island's nearby coastline, which is very jagged because of the hilly landscape and sea flooded valleys.
The weather during the crossing was balmy but there was also a strong wind blowing. This caused Vanessa some serious problems trying to hold onto both her hat and skirt at the same time whenever she went on deck.
Marlborough Wine Festival On the wine front, the Marlborough region of New Zealand's South Island (the top bit) is famous for wine making, particularly Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs. It is fitting that a wine festival is held here every February which we were lucky enough to attend.
The festival is an outdoor event to which all (or at least most) of the local wineries come and set up stalls around a central stage from which bands played live music most of the day. On the way into the festival we were
issued with a wine glass each and instructed to take it to the stalls we fancied.
Before following these instructions we signed ourselves onto a Pinot Noir tutorial. Pinot Noir is a red grape which the French use quite a lot to make nice wines in Burgundy (it's also used in Champagne). The grape has been really taking off in New Zealand, not least because it is very well suited to the climate of some parts of the country - quite cool (compared to Australia say) but with lots of sunshine, which leads to a long ripening season. Our tutorial was given by two guys, a local wine maker and his colleague who was a wine making consultant (great job!). We were each given five samples of locally produced Pinot Noir and talked through tasting each of them. The commentary was both amusing and informative. We learned for example that it is harder work for a wine maker to make decent wine from Pinot Noir because compared with other varieties the grape is 'less forgiving'. Also, yields are relatively low which means that you don't get as many bottles per acre of vines. This is reflected in the price
of the bottles in the shops.
Villa Maria's 'reserve' and 'cellar selection' Pinot Noirs are highly rated and the reserve was probably our favourite red wine of New Zealand. 2005 was a good year (better than 2004) because the grapes took a long time to ripen. The girl who served us at one of the wineries reckoned 2006 would be very good too.
After our lesson, and now a bit tipsy, we grabbed some lunch (gourmet venison burgers) and went to check out was was on offer at the various stalls. Mostly it was lots of wine...and at some point a bit later in the day we ended up dancing to a particularly funky band called Rhombus. They created a great atmosphere and managed to get pretty much everyone at the festival dancing to their music.
At the end of the day, we ate some blueberry muffins and caught one of the shuttle buses home.
Renwick We enjoyed the Marlborough wine festival so much that we decided to hang around a bit longer in order to do some more wine tasting and went to stay in the village of Renwick, along with Elanor. We hired
some bikes for the day and made it to about 5 of the 30 or so top quality wineries and visited 3 more by car the following day. Our favourite was definitely Villa Maria (where we managed to go three times in total for a tasting - the last one being in April!) but we also discovered a few other excellent wineries.
Queen Charlotte Track Whilst in the Marlborough region we spent a few days walking along a 60km stretch of coastline called the Queen Charlotte Track. This gave us lovely scenery similar to that which we had seen from our ferry crossing from Wellington to Picton.
The most memorable part of this little trip was Valentine's Day. On that evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner prepared by the friendly owners of the hostel we were staying at - Mahana's - along with an outstanding bottle of Villa Maria's cellar selection Chardonnay (2005!).
After some serious huffing and puffing up the steeper parts of the track we made it to the end where we were picked up by a water taxi and taken to more developed civilisation.
Heading south to Christchurch From Picton in
Christchurch city centre
The Starbucks with the best view! the north of the South Island we headed some 300km down to Christchurch (roughly half way down the East Coast). We travelled in our car with Elanor and enjoyed a pleasant drive along the coast. However, our stress levels did rise a bit when James mentioned that we were rather low on petrol. Indeed, we must have come quite close to an embarrassing situation because the petrol warning light was on for a good 80km before we found some petrol!
We spent a few days in Christchurch and the highlight of this time was undoubtedly a lovely dinner we had at a restaurant called Retour (complemented with a delightful 2003 Northrow Pinot Noir!). It is here that James was lucky enough to go for what turned out to be the nicest desert he had ever eaten (a trio of chocolate desserts - see photo)!
Watch out for our next blog where we continue our journey south to the mountains of Fiordland (and stop being so obsessed with wine!).
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Dan
non-member comment
Plural of octopus
If you're looking for a fancier, and more etymologically-friendly, plural than "octopuses", then I think "octopodes" is the way to go. But you may need a bigger dictionary...