Week 1: Marlborough Vineyards & Sounds

After driving about 200 miles up the east coast from Christchurch, we arrived at our idyllic B&B in our own private vineyard about 4 miles outside the city of Blenheim.  
We had a lovely little terrace about 5 yards from the vines, where we had coffee every morning, and sipped a little of the local Sauvignon Blanc each evening.  Not bad considering it's about 10F back in Cazenovia!

Like several of our recent winter travels, we're again taking things slow and easy, and largely unplanned from day to day other than knowing where we're staying in weeklong blocks at Airbnb's I booked back in June.
This week I've gone out for a 20-40 mile bike ride most mornings, before Norma and I headed out to a variety of adventures hiking, beach walking,
wine tasting, and even a day long boat cruise on the "mailboat" on Queen Charlotte Sound. There's a huge variety of landscapes to explore, and we're doing our best to get out and enjoy as many as we can, while still taking life as it comes and just relaxing in the moment 😎 

In addition to lots of walking and taking photos, we're also doing quite a bit of birding, and we've racked up at least a dozen new species so far. Considering that most of the bird life here is unique to New Zealand, it's not terribly hard to see new birds every day, but we're enjoying it nonetheless...  
Variable Oystercatcher 

That's about it for our first week - and we're now off to Greymouth and the West coast!
Cheers!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to New Zealand!

Image
After a very long, but mercifully uneventful day of travel, we're happily on the ground on the south island of New Zealand.  The 13 hours in the air between San Francisco and Christchurch went better than expected, with both Norma and I managing to get at least 6-8 hours of fitful sleep. Remarkably, after two days on the ground, we both feel like we've gotten beyond whatever jetlag we suffered. We spent the first two days in and around Christchurch, including a visit to the Botanical Garden (excellent!), and out to the coast at Lyttelton for a couple of great walks along the shoreline cliffs.  Lyttelton is also the port where Niall spent several days a few years back when the USCG icebreaker Polar Star stopped here before heading south to Antarctica. Coincidentally, while we were here, we were able to see the new floating pier/barge (NSF Discovery) waiting in the harbour to be escorted by the Polar Star down to McMurdo base! Pretty cool... 😎  ...
Read more

Week 3: Glaciers & Fiordland

Image
After a great week on the north central west coast, we've moved south - first 3 nights on Franz Josef at the foot of several glaciers, and then way south to Fiordland National Park for 4 nights on Manapouri.  These areas are probably what the south island is best known for... Particularly the iconic Milford Sound pictured above.  It doesn't disappoint!   Our first couple of days near the glaciers included a bunch of hikes to various lookouts and scenic vistas in the deep valleys under the glaciers. Sadly, the glaciers a retreating rapidly, so they are now a long way from the main highway, and hiking trails can only safely approach to points more than a mile down valley.  For reference, in 2013 when I was here with students, we could walk to within a few hundred yards of the front of the glacier! Between Fran Josef and Manapouri was a long, 7 hour drive over winding mountain highways - lots of spectacular views and ...
Read more