Live the Live ™

We’ve made it to the seashore town of Kaikoura, on the eastern/Pacific coast of New Zealand’s South Island. It’s pretty clear that this destination is one of the more touristy ones we’ve seen: ATV companies, skydiving, kayaking, whalewatching by sea or sky…the list goes on and on. Just cough up the cash and any kind of adventure is here. We’re planning a whale watch trip tomorrow afternoon, and hoping that it won’t be as windy as it is today…it’s really blowing and it’s quite cold  despite a beautiful day of sunshine.

We never made it to the town of Nelson. The road was still closed this morning, and we found out that not only was there a mudslide, but a logging company lost a load of lumber that tumbled down the mountainside and onto the main road. Man, I’d hate to be driving there when that happend! So I guess it was fate that we just wouldn’t see Nelson this time around.

The trip from Blenheim to Kaikoura is supposed to be about two hours long. It took us almost six. Granted, we did make many stops for photos since it was the first real beautiful day in a long time. And the scenery was spectacular: the road winding through mountains, hundreds of acres of grapevines, fields full of cattle, sheep and even deer (all farm-raised on pasture land here)…and flanked by the Pacific Ocean. We also made a pretty big detour to check a winery called Yealands Estate, which is one of the largest and most beautiful wineries we’ve ever seen. I can’t even begin to describe the vastness of the meticulously planted grapevines, and the beauty and size of the cellar. The wines weren’t bad, either! But we only bought one bottle this time, since we’re loaded down with wine and we can only take a certain amount of it home.

Before we left Blenheim, we made a quick stop to deliver Krupnikas bottle #2 to a local artist named Clarry Neame, a guy that paints spectacular oil paintings. We visited his gallery yesterday, when we had lunch at the Hunter’s Vineyard in Blenheim, where he has his studio. Kelly fell in love with one of his paintings entitled “The Song of Marlborough,” a beautiful mountain/vineyard scape, and yes, we bought it. He was especially happy that a fellow artist loved his work and we had a nice conversation with Clarry and his wife. We decided that the Krup bottle would go to them. The painting, fortunately, will be shipped to our home.

On the way to Kaikoura we made a stop at an internationally known foodie destination called Nins Bin. (I read about it in several foodie websites.) It’s basically a little shack in the middle of nowhere, right on Rt 1, the main road that takes you to Kaikoura. It’s smack dab on the water and just about all they sell is the local lobster New Zealanders call crayfish. It’s a clawless lobster, so all you really get is meat from the tail, and it’s stupidly expensive. We did the math and figured that it cost about $22 US dollars a pound (shell included)…but it’s one of those things you have to have when you’re here and the meat was really tasty…much firmer than our New England lobster. It was a fun experience and Kelly took a cool photo that we will post later on. By the way…the town of Kaikoura gets its name from two words: KAI, which means food…and KOURA, which means crayfish.

It’s 7:30PM now, and I’m getting dirty looks from the wife. The sun sets late here, so it is now the “magic hour,” as Kelly calls it…time to go and take pictures with the perfect light. Then it’s off the the Green Dolphin restaurant here…Italian food…nice change of pace!

OK…Ambien not kicking in yet…drinking more rum…so let’s talk road signs in New Zealand for a minute before I pass out.

Our favorite, usually found on bigger roads in cities, is “Merge Like a Zip!” which as far as we can tell, means merge one-by-one, like a zipper would. Hysterical. Gotta get it on video.

Also, I like the signs that show a car skidding and it says “When Frosty.”

Of course, I mentioned that driving is on the left. I’ve gotten pretty good with it, but there is one rule that is totally Kiwi and it is messed up. If you’re at an intersection, the guy on the right has the right of way, even if he’s the one crossing the intersection from a smaller road. That one takes some getting used to. Otherwise, there’s always a car ahead of you that you follow and hope he also isn’t a dumass tourist learning how to drive for the first time!

Our vehicle for this touring advneture, by the way, is a fabulous red Toyota Previa…a jellybean-like family van. Not very attractive, but it easily holds the massive quantities of luggage we carry on these journeys. I think it’s from 2006…not exactly a new model. But we rented from Apex, a Kiwi company, because the other guys (Hertz, Avis) would not let you take the same car all the way down to the bottom of the North Island, drive onto the ferry, and the continue on the South Island. You would literally have to unload all your crap, drag it onto the boat, then drag it into a new car when the ferry lands. Avoiding that nonsense was worth every extra penny we spent!

OK…one more sip and I’m off to bed! Cheers! No worries! Sweet as! And other local phrases.

So as I mentioned earlier, we decided to stay in the hood today rather than drive to the town of Nelson, about 90 minutes to the west. As it turned out, the nasty storm we had overnight caused some damage on the main drag to Nelson, so they shut the road down…we wouldn’t have been able to go anyway. But our plan is to go there tomorrow, then back pedal to Blenheim and then over to Kaikoura. The weather forecast is sunny and 75, but if the road still isn’t open, then we’ll have to totally give up on Nelson and just go to Kaikoura.

It’s lucky that we didn’t leave this area, because we had the greatest winery experience of the trip (and probably our lives) here today. We visited Clos Henri vineyards, a small place whose cellar (that would be a tasting room) was an old chapel transported over from Kaikoura and then renovated. Like Herzog, these guys decided that they needed a new challenge, and they started a winemaking business here in New Zealand despite success in France. Their wines were amazing, and we enjoyed a tasting and then a bottle with a selection of cheeses (local and French) and light salad while sitting on the steps of the chapel, overlooking the vineyard, the mountains, and enjoying the rare sunshine we finally had today. It was a great experience, and we were lucky enough to be the only people there for over three hours, so we got the full attention of Celine, the woman that went into great detail about the unique conditions of the soil on the property that made their particluar wines, mainly Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs, so special. Really educational…and fun.

By the way, we did return to Herzog this morning to sample their wines in their cellar, and wound up buying six or so bottles, as we did with Clos Henri. It is obvious at this point that we have far more wines bottles than room for them in our wine suitcases (and they hold a total of two cases!)…so we will be drinking down our inventory in the days ahead. There are no wineries in Kaikoura or Christchurch, our stops for the next four days, so we’ll need to tap our supply. There is one winery in between the two towns that has gotten great reviews, Pegasus Bay, and we will be having lunch there on Dec 31st.

We hit a supermarket in Belnheim today to gets some basic supplies, and there was a liquor store in town that was very limited in itsinventory of good booze. I bought a bottle of Appleton 8 year old rum from Jamaica, which I’ve never had before. It’s OK…not as good as My Gay, but better than that darned Bacardi which seems to be everywhere.

We had dinner this evening at what everyone was calling the second best restaurant in the area after Herzog…a place called Gibb’s. I gotta tell you…the food was good…sort of German comfort food done very nicely. But it was nowhere near the amazing experience we had at Herzog. The room: much more simple, the walls were literally burlap. The waitress we had: clueless. The service was spotty at best. The mark-up on wine: over the top. But like I said, the food was good: a beautiful pea soup with bacon and mushrooms…wonderful raviolis…braised duck and veal…all delicious. But calling this place the second best restaurant is doing an incredible injustice to Herzog. They are miles apart. (And believe me, I will write about it in tripadvisor.com when I get home!)

Many of the local winery employees were the ones to tell us that they thought Gibb’s was better than Herzog in some cases…and I think in all honesty, they’ve never been to Herzog. It’s a very expensive meal…and I think there’s sort of almost a backlash at Herzog in the way it is run with such Swiss precision. Tough nails…they do a superior job.

So…my women have once again passed out on me. It’s 11PM our time on Dec 28…Tuesday night. That makes it 5AM on the east coast Tuesday morning. I don’t know why I don’t sleep like they do. Perhaps the running around just gets me wired. Thank goodness Mr ambien is here, and I will have a good night’s sleep, ready to drive to Nelson if the road is open. If not, it’s Kaikoura, a quaint seaside town on the eastern (Pacific) shore of this South Island, known for its amazing colonies of birds and seals on the shore…and its sperm whales and dolphins out at sea. It is there where we will have our whale-watch experience that Ava is already talking about.

By the way…a significant side-note: Ava signed her name on her artwork all by herself this week. Pretty cool. Of course, it’s a lot easier when your name isn’t “Bernadette,” but I won’t tell her that.

Still in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, and miles away from where the quake happened. My understanding is that it wasn’t a big one. But these things are pretty common…after all, New Zealand is on the same “rumble zone” as Japan and even Hawaii. I read that they get very few quakes that do real damage, but records show they get thousands of small ones every year.

We will be going to Christchurch in about three days, for New Years. We’ll keep an eye on things and see how it all goes.

Meanwhile, our plans here were to go to the town of Nelson today, the vacation hotspot of the South Island, full of wineries, art galleries, amazing beaches and food. But we got hit by a huge storm last night and this morning, with winds gusting into the 50s, so we decided to stay local. Believe me, we’ve only gotten to the tip of the winery iceberg here in Blenheim. (Pronounced Blen ’em. Blenheim? I didn’t even know ’em!)

Since the plan is to go to Kaikoura tomorrow (that’s heading south) we’ve decided that we’re going to go to Nelson first, which is totally in the wrong direction. It will mean more driving than planned tomorrow, and we have moved our whale-watch in Kaikoura to the next day to accomodate.

Nelson is 90 minutes away…then we have to head back to Blenheim, and go past town another 2 hours to Kaikoura. So it will be a busy day tomorrow.

Last night was an amazing dinner at Herzog winery and restaurant…owned by people that transplanted from Switzerland after establshing a Michelin-star-rated restaurant there. (Don’t ask me why you’d move if you already had that….but we’re glad they did!)

We took a chance hoping that Ava would allow us the famous 7-course degustation menu. It was amazing and our daughter was amazing and hung in there with us for almost 4 hours! Kelly had the menu with the matching Herzog wine selections. I just took little sips from her glasses, and stayed the course with some vodka. (Sadly, all they had was Smirnoff.) We both agreed at the end that it was in our top 3 (if not the top) meal we’ve ever had. The food was superb…the wines matched perfectly. (I wish I could’ve enjoyed the wines with this meal, but after a day of tasting about 30 wines, I was done. Funny…Kelly was just getting started!)

So now our storm has started to clear…no rain, but the wind is still here. Tomorrow promises to be a much nicer day. So if we have to come in out of the weather by going to more wineries today, so be it.

Marlborough wine, that is. It’s about 5PM and my two gals have passed out again. What’s up with that? Kelly’s giving me funny looks why I’m not grabbing a nap and I’m giving her funny looks why she is. Oh, well…

As I mentioned at lunchtime, we had been to several wineries in the morning alone, each quite generous with their tastings. I found the sparkling wine at No 1 Family Estate to be the best I’ve ever had. Granted, I’m not a fan of sparkling wine or champagne, so the fact that I loved these wines was not just a surprise to me but to Kelly as well. Nautilus wines were just OK…I think we may have bought one bottle from them. Wairau River had that amazing lunch (an incredible mussel and fresh dill soup, fantastic chicken liver pate, and a shrimp-spinach-feta-olive pizza that was out of this world.) It was, along with Elephant Hill in Hawkes Bay, the best lunch we’ve had on this entire trip. And Wairau River white wines were excellent…did a tasting and had some more with lunch.

Then it was off to Seresin, where they not only create some nice wines but they also have their own olive oils…some infused with lemon, lime, or even  orange. They’re also a totally organic winery, which is admirable, but as Kelly said: “I never found an organic wine that I loved.” I kinda understand that. Some man-made non-organic tweaks just make some wines better…no way around it. As long as there’s a balance, that’s OK. I’m the same way with my garden at home. I would love to be 100% organic, but the fact of the matter is, if I get a swarm of insects in my yard devouring my plants, no organic cure will ever get rid of them like a chemical solution. The secret is to use it in moderation and only when absolutely necessary.

There was still time for one more winery and that was Fromm. They’ve gotten great reviews, and many wine experts rave about the winry. But I wasn’t really crazy about any of their wines. Maybe it was because I already had 25 tastings before that! But Kelly did find a Sauvignon Blanc that she liked and bought a couple of bottles.

After that, it was a trip to a little shopping area that featured distilled spirits by a company called Prenzel. They make all kinds of booze, including an award-wnning vodka that I sampled and enjoyed…but not enough to buy. And they have a brandy-based honey liqueur that was delicious despite being incredibly sweet. I bought a small bottle to take home.

So tonight it’s dinner at Herzog winery, arguably the finest restaurant in this area. I just got the OK for dinner tomorrow night at Gibb’s arguably the other finest restaurant in this area!

It drizzled on and off all day today…the sun showed itself just a little. It’s squalling outside right now. But we’re hoping to see more sun later on this evening at the “golden hour,” when it sets and the real amazing colors come out. Sunset here is around 7:30 to 8:30, I guess…so our daylight lasts a long time. Quite a change from back home, where I see on Yahoo that they had a blizzard in NYC, with crazy amounts of snowfall, and I guess New England will be getting a bunch of it, too.

We’re enjoying lunch (and a 3rd tasting session!) at Wairau River Wines. We’ve been to Nautilus and No. 1 Family Estate, where we had some amazing sparkling wines.

Got wi-fi here, so here’s my blog from this morning…

OK, here’s a visual for you…the only place I can write quietly this morning without waking my girls up is on the toilet. We’ve arrived at the Marlborough Vintners Hotel in the town of Blenheim, which is right in the middle of the famous Marlborough wine region of New Zealand. The hotel consists of suites that make up a small neighborhood, and you drive to your little home, surrounded by growing vineyards.

Despite getting room 13 and finding a dead bird at our door as we arrived, I’m trying not to be superstitious about this place. The room itself is spacious and ultra modern and super clean…the beds comfortable (Ava gets the sleeper sofa)…and it has a nice kitchenette area.

Our trip yesterday, from Tom’s Cottages in Havelock North to this place in Blenheim was the longest day trip of our entire vacation, by my calculations, and we were all extremely fried by the end of it: over four hours driving through somewhat mountainous roads…four hours waiting for the ferry (we got here early and found that restaurant with wi-fi to kill some time)…and then another four hours total for the ferry ride itself plus the drive to Blenheim.

We will have long driving days of five hours still ahead of us, but it will be all driving and nothing else.

One of Kelly’s biggest complaints about this trip so far (and she’s right) is that the distances between places are so huge–and we’re trying to see everything–so we’re just blasting through the countryside without being able to leisurely stop and take a lot of pictures, soak up the scenery, whatever. I’m hoping we can take it a bit slower here on the South Island.

We also have not had the greatest weather. Cloudy, windy days have been common, rain threatening sometimes. Only Christmas Day was perfect, with blazing sunshine all day. And so I think that also reduces the photo opportunities we’re looking for. For example, the ride into Marlborough Sound and Picton, the port on South Island where the Interislander ferry lands, is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. Instead, we had heavy clouds and even heavier winds that beat me up as I tried to take some video on the top deck of the ship. I’ll post one and you’ll see for yourself: it was nuts. Of course, standing on the top deck of that ferry means I was about eighty feet in the air…the wind whipping all around me, and spray hitting my camera lenses.

A quick note about the hugeness of these ferries: this is not your basic car ferry.
It holds hundreds of cars on one level, railroad cars on another level, trucks on another level, and hundreds of passengers on two more levels, including cafes, bars, a kids’ playground, a nursery room, a movie theater, even a luxury lounge for those who paid the big bucks for a ticket.

Our ferry had no railroad cars aboard, so they used that level for cars as well, and we actually drove onto the ship via a railroad bridge on railroad tracks to get to our space! Crazy. This was no small boat…and no surprise here, the ride was really quite smooth.
Back to driving, even though we just had that long day of travel, the original plan for today was to jump back into the rental and drive to the “nearby” town of Nelson, about an hour and a half away. It’s known as New Zealand’s playground in many ways: its beaches, art galleries, amazing restaurants, wineries and more. But wisely, we decided that we would stay in the Blenheim area today and try Nelson tomorrow…to get a break from a lot of driving.

We literally have several of the best wineries next door to us here, so we plan on checking them out today. One of those wineries, Herzog, has what many critics call the best restaurant in all of New Zealand, and we’ve managed to get reservations for dinner tonight! Looking forward to that. The Herzog story is an interesting one: they established a beautiful vineyard and Michelin star-winning restaurant in Switzerland, and then at the peak of their fame, packed it all up and came here! That’s some set of balls. Apparently, they know what they’re doing because they’re getting rave reviews here as well.

As you’ve seen, I got a chance to post a bunch of photos from our trip now. I did that last night, as fried as we were, after our long day’s journey. I also have video that needs to be uploaded. That will be next.

But right now, my legs are going numb from sitting on this toilet bowl! Gotta sign off!

I bought a Flip HD video camera specifically to be able to share videos on this blog, and for whatever reason, now that I’ve put a few movies together, the software won’t let me upload it onto this site. Very frustrating.

I also wrote a blog this morning on my iPad, which for some reason is not working at this hotel. Will try to uplink elsewhere later today. (I’m using Kelly’s laptop right now.)

The lack of wi-fi locations in this country has kind of caught us off guard, as has the fact that distances here are much further than we thought, leaving us little time for communication with family or friends via phone lines or SKYPE with that pesky 18-hour difference in time.

So…just to say it…we are doing well! Our colds are pretty much gone, but we’re really pushing ourselves on this trip to see as much as possible, and it’s leaving us exhausted by the end of the day. There will be a few places where we can catch our breath, but it’s one of those situations where you really don’t want to miss anything in a far-off land you may never see again, and so you push yourself (and your hardy daughter) to the limit every day.

So we apologize for not calling at Christmas…we hope to be able to do that around New Years. But suffice it so say, this is a wild adventure and we’re trying to do as much as we can in what now seems like a very short amount of time, despite it being the longest vacation of our lives!

Peace!