New Zealand Day 36: More Marlborough Wine, and Back to the North Island

Boy, am I sorry to be leaving the South Island today. On the other hand, the North Island is pretty terrific, too! 

I spent a fair amount of time last night finding a winery that did brunch. Many of the ones near Nelson open at 9:30 or 10 AM, and some have restaurants . I finally settled on Saint Clair, which turned out not to have a formal brunch but did do tasty coffees and amazing scones. 

We sat in the garden, surrounded by grapevines: 

My family abandoned me when it came to actually tasting wine but I persevered. After all, it was well after 5:00 New Hampshire time! Here's the "cellar door," the Kiwi word for tasting room.

Saint Clair is known for making single block wines, wines from a particular section of a vineyard. (Those don't get exported, though.) I tried a 2013 Sauv Blanc from block 1, a 2012 Riesling from block 9, a 2012 Gruner Veltliner (an Austrian grape, not frequently grown), and a 2010 Pinot Noir from block 15. Though I'm generally a Riesling girl and did enjoy the Riesling, the Sauv Blanc was particularly fine and I ended up buying a bottle of that.

Then I convinced the crew to hit one more winery on the way to the ferry at Picton. I picked Hunter's because it was close and had won garden awards, so at least my mom would have some nice things to look at while I tasted!

Our hostess had bright green nails for Saint Patrick's Day, since the founder of the winery was Irish!

I tasted my first Kiwi bubbly, yum. They also had a not-too-oaky Chardonnay that was quite good. I wasn't a big fan of the Riesling.

Then we headed through the grapevines...

...to the ferry.

This boat had a big playground belowdecks that B really enjoyed.

As we docked, we headed back to our car to drive off the boat. Suddenly, an alarm sounded, a gate right in front of us closed, and we started moving! Turns out we were parked on a ramp that lowered to the next deck.

Once in Wellington, we made our way to the Top 10 in the suburb of Lower Hutt (yes, I felt Star Wars-y the entire time). Yay for a playground!

Greeley Ponds

Even though I am back stateside and working full time once again, I can't let Hilary and B have all the fun! In the middle of last week, some weather passed through that did almost nothing around Concord, but dumped upwards of one foot of snow in the Whites. So come the weekend I pulled out my backcountry skis and cold weather gear, put Jasper in the back of the station wagon, and headed north.

I searched through our library of outdoors literature to find a trail that would be:

• fun on skis, because I haven't gotten to do much of that this year
• not groomed trail, because frankly I would just embarrass myself trying to properly cross country ski or, worse yet, skate ski. jasper may not be welcome on groomed trail, anyway
• not heavily traveled, because who wants to be doing the same thing as everyone else
• not too technical, because even though they're technically backcountry skis, I have neither the equipment nor the ability to do serious telemark skiing through the woods without breaking something
• not too far away, because even through the best stuff is in the notches, I don't want to spend hours in the car for this

I found a nice looking candidate just off the Kancamaugus Highway, about 75 minutes from the house: Greeley Ponds. There is a well-used hiking trail from the main trailhead, but also a little-used ski trail that parallels it on a gentle ascent to a pair of ponds nestled between Osceola and Kancamaugus peaks. The ponds freeze predictably (especially during this winter!), which would allow some skiing out in the open. From the trailhead to the far end of the ponds and back would be perhaps 5 miles.


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From Snowshoe Hikes in the White Mountains by Steven Smith, 2000

In planning the hike, I had the choice between 40s with a chance of rain on Saturday, or 15 and mostly sunny Sunday. I chose the latter, because it is still winter here and, dammit, I'm gonna enjoy it! It was chilly, but I prefer a nice clean cold to still-pretty-cold-in-addition-to-wet.

Jasper was excited to come along no matter what:

The hiking trailhead was packed with cars - folks headed up Osceola mostly. But 0.3 mi west I pulled up beside a solitary vehicle at the ski trail head. Jasper immediately began his usual snow-frollick:

Since the snowstorm a few days before, it looks like just one other person had come through, followed by some thawing on Saturday, a dusting overnight, and then Jasper and myself. There were also some fresh paw prints - a fox or coyote perhaps?

On the way up I ran into only a few people. One older fellow from Sanbornton caught up to me on skis, and we journeyed across the ponds together. He apparently comes up to this trail frequently, and is a veteran of many of the long thru-hikes in the U.S. He explained to me that the trail further south past the lakes eventually emerges in Waterville Valley ski area, but has been hard going since Irene a few years back. After a bite of lunch, Jasper and I headed back across the ponds:

Jasper's energy was much diminished on the way back. Even though he is largely impervious to the cold, there's no getting around the fact that it was only in the mid teens with some wind. Although I had scrupulously purchased some new booties for Jasper the day before, I neglected to actually put them in the car Sunday morning, meaning that Jasper and I had to stop occassionally to de-ice his paws. He was a good sport about it though, and I think he did have a good time. He was pretty tired - and snowy! - by the time we returned to the car:

While Jasper usually sits up and pants excitedly anytime he's in the car, today he konked out all the way home.

New Zealand Day 35: Tastings in Blenheim

One of the great things about staying two nights in the same place is that we don’t have to pack up the car by 10 AM! So, I slept in this morning. I got up once in the night to stretch the shoulder but didn’t need any ice—a good sign.

B had a wonderful violin practice yesterday (which to me, doesn’t particularly mean that she played well, though she did, but that she remained reasonable without screaming at me, falling on the floor as if her legs turned to jell-o, or arguing about every tiny thing I say), so I was hoping to continue the trend this morning. This was too much to hope for, apparently, so we were very late leaving the apartment for the Blenheim farmers’ market, conveniently occurring today.

It was terrific once we got there, though! It was much smaller than the Nelson one, perhaps owing to the rainy weather, but had some great stuff. I got a great latte from the coffee cart, a delicious peach crepe for breakfast, and then we found plums (picking the Angelino variety after sampling a couple), more strawberries (I can’t get over the fact that they are an all-summer-long fruit here), corn, and some green beans. If we were going to be here more than another week, I would’ve gotten some olive oil, too. This is definitely the right time of year to visit New Zealand!

After lunching on leftovers in the apartment, we headed out for some wine tasting. The first stop was SpyValley, which my mom picked because of my love for Riesling. Plus, they are solar powered!

(Yes, I know the number and quality of photos has fallen off drastically since Alex went home. I will try to do better.)

They had some toys for B, which was great, and we tasted our way through Sauvignon Blanc, two Rieslings, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Rose, and Pinot Noir. I think my favorite was the “free range” Riesling, which came from a patch of grapes that couldn’t be harvested last year due to a flood and thus were left on their own for awhile. But I really liked them all. We came away with a bottle of the Sauv Blanc and free range Riesling.

Then we headed off to Wairau River, which was also terrific. Their Sauvignon Blanc—usually not my favorite type of wine—was the second today that I’d be happy to drink any time! I actually liked their regular 2013 vintage better than the 2012 reserve that we also tasted. The 2013 Pinot Gris was terrific, the 2013 Riesling was also very good, and the 2011 Reserve Pinot Noir was super tasty. We also tried a 2011 Reserve Viognier, which was interesting but not my favorite. We ended up leaving with the Sauvignon Blanc, the Pinot Gris (now with a big dent in it as I write this after supper), and the Pinot Noir. Mmmm.

Brynna colored happily at Wairau River (they gave her some crayons and a coloring page) but Mom figured it was time to do something that she could get into, so we then headed off to Makana for a chocolate tasting. Today they were handing out samples of macadamia nut brittle, which was delicious, and orange truffle, which was incredible. Here’s B having a taste and looking into the kitchen.

So, even in the rain, New Zealand is great. I've never really done wine tastings before, but it is terrific and now I wish we were staying a couple more days in Blenheim! When my parents were here a few years ago they did their wine tours on bicycles, which would've been awesome. Our Top 10 rents bikes but I couldn't convince anyone that we should take them out in the rain. Too bad.

Tomorrow we are heading back to the North Island via ferry. The plan is for a couple of nights in Wellington and then somehow make our way north to Auckland for a flight in a week. Unclear if we're going to go through Tongariro again or just up the east coast. Hmmm....

I love it here in New Zealand. Towards the end of any vacation I am usually ready to be back home but I have to say I'd be happy to stay here indefinitely—though Alex and Jasper would have to come and we'd prefer if a bunch of you, dear readers, joined us as well!

New Zealand Day 34: Off to Blenheim

After our two nights at the Top 10 in Richmond (which had free wifi, but only a moderately awesome playground), we packed ourselves up again and crammed everything into the car. We drove just up the road into Nelson proper for the Saturday morning farmers' market. It was outstanding!

The market was perhaps three or four times the size of the summer market in Concord, with a huge variety of vendors: fruit and veggies (it's harvest time here and they appear to grow strawberries all summer long), honey, olive oil, bread, several food trucks, several coffee trucks, as well as stalls with clothes, bags, candles, stained glass, metal and woodwork, pottery, painting, and jewelry. There were buskers, including a pair of high school aged girls playing the violin and a younger girl, perhaps nine or ten, playing violin while her brother played guitar. B was enchanted with the violin players. (Yes, she really does love the violin. She hates it when I give her any sort of correction during practice, but she loves playing and learning new music. She'd just rather do it without the involvement of her annoying parents!)

We stocked up on food supplies and also did some browsing in the crafty part of the market. I've been looking for a replacement for the shoulder bag I got in Vieques six years ago, which is disintegrating on this trip! There were several different options and I eventually decided on a purple felt bag, big enough to hold iPad, phone, wallet, and camera comfortably. There was one large enough for a computer but I decided it was too unwieldy.

I'm quite pleased with it!

I also came away with this adorable laptop cover. It's Dartmouth green and has a cute little owl and is upcycled fabric...how could I resist?

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I woke up on Friday with a painful right shoulder, which actually got quite a bit worse through the day. I was up in the middle of the night to ice it and it was still feeling pretty bad this morning. I was even having trouble lifting it up in certain positions.

I noticed as we were going through the market that there were two massage therapists there who were signing people up for short chair massages. After checking with one of them that she'd be willing to work on me with an acute issue (it helped to be able to say that I was a primary care doctor and that I thought it was muscle-related rather than a nerve thing coming from my neck!) I signed up for a ten minute massage.

I'm so glad that I did. She found a huge bunch of knots ringing my shoulder and was able to really get in there and loosen them up. It was not the most comfortable ten minutes of my life, but when she was done I had much more comfortable range of motion. Whew!

It was also the most adventurous massage of my life—NZ is bracing for the arrival of rain and wind from a cyclone out to sea, and the winds arrived in full force during the last hour of the market. You can see that the massage therapist's tent was in pieces by the time we finished!

Actually, she slipped several of the walls down before we even started so that the wind could just whip through instead of fighting against the canvas.

Once we were done at the market, we stopped at The Free House pub for a drink and a picnic lunch (they let you bring your own food in). The bread, cheese, and heirloom tomatoes from the market were amazing. The hard cider wasn't that great...I think I got spoiled by all the delicious ones at the brewery yesterday!

Then it was time to head for Blenheim. With the bad weather on the way, where better to go but the wineries of Marlborough?

I tried to keep my shoulder limber in the car and was able to do even more stretching once we arrived at the Top 10. Yes, Alex and I were not big fans of the Top 10 parks when we were campervanning because they are expensive-ish and often the powered sites are pretty close together, but they've been working out well for us now that we have a car because they always have a decent playground and they also have the sort of basic rooms that we want. If we weren't traveling with a 5 year old I think I'd be trying to find independent motels and B&B's, but this is getting the job done for now, and we've joined the Top 10 Club so we get a discount at each place. The other great feature is that some of the Top 10's (including this one in Blenheim) have a whirlpool, and Top 10 Club members get to use it for free. This was a big plus for my shoulder tonight!

Tomorrow, we shall wine.

New Zealand Day 33: Paragliding in Richmond on the North Coast

The Nelson area is terrific, but we'd come back for one reason in particular: paragliding.

One of my dad's big wishes for this trip was to paraglide, and we had planned to do it in Queenstown, but as you will recall, we got rained out both times we came through the southern lakes. When looking around for options besides another trip back to Queenstown, which would be quite far, we came across Stew at Nelson Paragliding, and arranged our itinerary to put us here on what looked like a decent day.

We bounced emails and phone calls back and forth over the last couple of days to keep tabs on the weather, but this culminated in us arriving at the cricket grounds in Richmond to meet Stew just before noon today. He bundled us all (Mom and B included, though they wouldn't be flying) into his truck, along with a couple of other paragliders who would be launching solo, and we headed up the dirt track to Barnicoat Hill.

As we came up to the summit, we saw a hawk floating along next to the car, a promising omen for helpful thermals!

 Here's a view from the hill, with Richmond (sort of a suburb of Nelson) spread out in front of us and Abel Tasman National Park across the bay. This is on the north coast of the South Island.

Stew's plan, wind permitting, was to launch with me, fly me around for awhile, and stay high enough to re-land on the top of the hill, then take my dad and fly him around before landing down at our car parked in town.

After signing the waiver, I suited up.

B did some final checks and made sure I was ready to go.

Stew got me settled in the harness. As I have learned over the last few weeks, paragliding is when you sit up, and hang gliding is when you are stretched out prone. Stew explained how I'd wriggle back into the seat once we were up in the air.

He explained takeoff procedures: basically, stay on my feet and walk with him until the wind takes us.

A few final instructions, with B looking on:

Then he checked the glider was arranged properly...

And attached the two of us together, as well as to the glider.

 We walked, then jogged down to the edge of the hill...

And then up up and away!

It wasn't actually scary at all. I was nervous that at the beginning there would be some kind of falling sensation, but there wasn't. And I felt very secure in the seat.

Stew was able to find some thermals and we circled quite high, getting a beautiful view of Abel Tasman as well as the mountains of Kahurangi and Nelson Lakes national parks. Stunning!

He took some photos and movies in flight, too:

Eventually we came in for a landing—actually a skid—atop the hill again.

Success!

Then it was Dad's turn.

He had a great time as well!

Before taking off with Dad, Stew had explained that he was going to try to land in one of two places in town, depending on the wind, and pointed them out to Mom. The plan was for her to drive the truck down and meet them. Once we saw that they were coming in for a landing at the cricket ground next to our car, we packed up and I actually ended up driving us back down. Just part of the adventure!

Stew recommended McCahsin's Brewery for lunch—a big hit! They had a corner full of toys for B to play with, a couple of yummy vegetarian options to eat, and of course, delicious things to drink.

All three of the adults ended up ordering flights of cider to taste:

There were five kinds: lemon honey, traditional apple, three berry, ginger lime, and juicy pear. They were all terrific, I can't decide which one was my favorite, and we polished them all off.

We got B something nice to drink, too:

The rest of the afternoon and evening were pretty quiet, with some naps for the paragliders (it's such hard work to sit there and gawk at the views, and then drink a liter of cider, you see) and other quiet activities.

We ate in our cabin and have been watching some rugby on the telly this evening. A delightful vacation-y day! The only thing that's got me worried is a pain in my shoulder (not caused by paragliding, I could feel it twinge this morning before we went) that's actually gotten worse through the day. Am hoping I just slept on it wrong last night and naproxen/stretching/heat/ice will have it back in business in no time. B was very concerned and has been very helpful with massaging it with a tennis ball.

Tomorrow we're heading back to Blenheim for the rest of the weekend. There's some dreadful weather coming in, so I think there's a lot of Marlborough wine tasting in our immediate future. Life is rough!

New Zealand Day 32: Whale Watching in Kaikoura

We passed a pleasant night in our motor lodge—though I vaguely remember waking up a couple of times to shove Brynna back to her side of the double bed—and woke to a gloriously warm and sunny day.

B and I even had a perfectly civil violin practice, which was excellent as I was able to grab some video to send to her teacher.

Then we headed downtown (checkout time at all of these places is 10 AM) to pass a couple of hours before reporting for whale watching.

The main reason we came to Kaikoura is whale watching. There is an extremely large sea canyon—more than 1000 meters deep—just off the coast, which is apparently a haven for marine life. There are several semi-resident sperm whales and a variety of other sorts of whales that migrate through at various times of year. The local Maori founded a company some years ago to take tourists out to see them, and it’s become the main draw for the town.

Originally this was going to be a girls-only event as my dad has a tendency towards seasickness, but once he learned that the whales we were most likely to spot were sperm whales, a la Moby Dick, he decided that he’d give it a go. We loaded him up with Dramamine and crossed our fingers.

After our amazing dolphin watching experience on the North Island, and also based on a whale watching boat that Alex and I had gone out on during our honeymoon in Alaska, I figured this would be a version of those cruises—just motor around until you find something.

Well, no. Turns out it’s a bit more complicated than that with the sperm whales. They take extremely deep and long dives into the sea canyon, normally disappearing for 45 to 60 minutes at a time, and they only surface for 5 or 10 minutes in between. So the captain uses an underwater microphone to hear the clicking sounds that they make to locate and stun their prey, and then we try to stay as close as possible, looking around carefully for when they actually surface and spout, then zip over to see them up close.

And we were able to execute this maneuver successfully! We had stopped for a hydrophone check when the folks out on the bow yelled and pointed forward and to the left. B and I, standing just inside the cabin, had a chance to see a black bump in the water and a spray of water off in the distance before we all ran back to our seats so the captain could speed the boat closer.

As soon as he cut the engine we went up to the top deck and there he was! (Definitely a he—the sperm whales near Kaikoura are all male, as the females stay in warmer waters near Fiji.) We saw the front two thirds poking out of the water, from nose to dorsal hump…tail was underwater as he rested. We gawked and I got photos and a little video as he relaxed there, occasionally spouting. Very nifty!

After five minutes or so, one of the crew guys said that it looked like he was getting ready to go back down. And indeed, his head disappeared, and I was able to catch his tail on film as he propelled himself down into the deep once more. Amazing.

We weren’t able to find any more whales—the word from the other boats/planes/helicopters was that another one had gone for a dive about the same time ours did, so not likely to resurface for awhile—so we headed back closer to shore and instead found a huge pod of dusky dolphins.

There were maybe 50 or 75 of them, and they were zipping all around our boat and leaping pretty frequently in the air for acrobatics. Actually much more exciting than a whale, but lacking quite the same imposing presence! I actually woke Brynna up to see them, as she’d fallen asleep on my lap after the whale excitement. I was especially glad that my parents got the chance to see dolphins.

As the dolphins moved off, we headed even closer to shore to check out a seabird rookery rock that also doubled as a seal lounge. I just love watching the seals climb (rather quickly and impressively) on their fins.

Eventually it was time to head back to shore.

We then headed north along the east coast, stopping about 20 km north at the Ohau seal colony right next to the road. This is an actual breeding colony, so featured many small tidal pools full of baby seals. Adorable!

Then we continued on our way. The eventual goal for the night was Nelson, due to some excitement planned for tomorrow, but we needed supper around the time we were passing through Blenheim. With my Rough Guide trapped under the pile of bags carefully packed into the trunk, I resorted to googling and checking Trip Advisor for options. The first one that came up sounded good but turned out to also sell cigars, which was a no-go for me!

One restaurant that was getting amazing reviews on TripAdvisor was Gramado's, with comments equally praising great food, great service, and child-friendly. Sold! Except for the fact that it is a Brazilian restaurant...not exactly a cuisine known for being vegetarian-friendly. However, with the reviews I was seeing, and the fact that we were all tired and hungry, it seemed to be worth a try.

And it turned out to be amazing. As soon as we walked in, one of the owners ran through a list of veggie options, and then the other owner (it's a married couple) came over to our table once we sat down, charmed Brynna instantly, and gave us the vegetarian run-through again. We had some ridiculously delicious food—tasty garlic bread to start, as well as cassava cakes, which were a lot like deep-fried mashed-potatoey things. Mmmm. We shared a couple of mains: a pasta with pesto and mushrooms, and a dish that usually has prawns but in our case was seared roasted veggies in a pumpkin cream sauce. We were too full for dessert but are seriously considering going back when we're back in Blenheim in a couple of days. 

Full and happy, we continued on our way to Nelson, where we pulled into the Top 10 Holiday Park and Motel just as the office was closing up for the night (we'd called ahead and they'd already left our key outside to pick up). Now that we've made the transition from campervanning to car-and-motel-ing, I've discovered that the motels all offer milk when you arrive! None of us have our tea with milk, though, so we decline. Quite civilized, however.

New Zealand Day 31: Hanmer Springs

We slept well at Forest Peak, and thanks to the heated drying rack in the bathroom (Hanmer Springs has a ski area so it draws people in the winter too), the laundry that I'd done in the sink was even dry!

After breakfast, violin practice, and some cross-stitch for B (my mom got her a kids' project that she loves!) we packed up and headed out.

Hanmer Springs is actually a hot springs, and especially after the big hike yesterday I was eager to check out the thermal pools. This is a much bigger complex than the places we've been before, with lots of different pools with different temperatures and features. The grown-ups' favorite was the AquaTherapy pool with the different shaped pipes that shot water at your neck and shoulders. Sweet. I wish there had been one set up for leg massaging, since that's what I really need today!

B enjoyed some of the hot pools though refused to accompany mom and me into the sulfur ones. She loved the slightly cooler lazy river and children's play area, though she was too small (and also too timid) for the big waterslides.

Sorry, I was too busy relaxing to take photos. You can see that we lost our main photographer when Alex departed!

Eventually we dragged ourselves out of the hot pools and went in search of lunch, finding the fantastic Powerhouse Cafe. I had a fabulous pizza loaded up with veggies and a really, really yummy glass of Riesling from the nearby Waipara wine country. We were also able to talk to Alex at lunchtime, which was delightful.

On our way out of Hanmer, we stopped at the Marble Point Winery. The lady at the motel recommended it, and we were really glad we did!

We tried five wines, including a Sauvignon Blanc, a Chardonnay, two Rieslings, and a Pinot Noir. I ended up buying a couple bottles of the classic Riesling, which was very tasty. B sniffed the wines with me and downed her own bottle of sparkling apple juice.

We took a photo outside on the terrace.

Then it was on to Kaikoura, back on the East Coast. The drive was made much more exciting by the fact that we were about to run out of gas and couldn't find a petrol station! We must've been down to our last drop by the time we pulled into town.

Tonight we are staying at the Heritage Court Motor Lodge, which is very comfy and has the big advantage of free and unlimited wifi. I was all excited because I thought I'd get to upload some videos from our trip, but there seems to be some kind of data limit because I have been able to upload photos just fine, but no videos at all, not even short ones. Well, I tried!

This evening we headed downtown to try out the mini-golf place we passed on the drive in. Sadly, it was closed. Instead, we drove along the waterfront and eventually wandered along the beach a bit, discovering a little crowd watching a couple of kayaks come in. Turns out we were watching the second place team complete the GODZone Adventure Race, a multi-day trek involving hiking, running, swimming, kayaking, canoeing, and biking. Some teams will be out until Saturday!

Tomorrow we are planning to go whale watching, which is the main attraction here in Kaikoura. Here's hoping!