Sunday 26 February 2023

On the recommendation of friends, today we drive a little south to Blenheim for lunch. But first, on the recommendation of the same friends, we call into the tasting room of Lawson’s Dry Hills. We sniff and swirl, but don’t spit, some lovely wines and Delphine is extremely knowledgeable about the wines. I fear that she sometimes might, though, get confused about which is her car, so this is probably a good idea

Before heading to the restaurant we call into the supermarket for supplies for a light in-room snack this evening (2 apples, cheese). I believe I have previously mentioned that eggs were scarce. Just in case I scrambled that message, here’s a message from the supermarket

And then we go to the restaurant. Harvest is set in the most beautiful grounds

It’s a still day

and it’s sunny! We sit on the verandah of this gorgeous place and soak up the garden views. The service is great, variously supplied by a Dutchman, an American, a Brit from Bristol and a Japanese woman. We have met so many young tourists who work in hospitality – in NZ for a year and then they head to Australia for a year. And work is easy to find for them.

The food at Harvest is lovely – all cooked on a char grill. I’ve never had grilled mussels before and they were delicious. This is quite the best meal we have had in NZ, and such a beautiful setting. Thanks for the tip, Penny.

It takes us a couple of hours to finish the wine and we then wander, or is that weave, our way around the garden.

The lengths some young men will go to

for a bit of weed

We drive back to Picton, where we see not one, but two firries. Bound for Willington

Their timetables are all over the place and are playing havoc with those booked. We feel confident that we have made the right decision to fly into Wellington, despite the 5 hour drive to the airport.

Second day without rain and we’re hoping for a third tomorrow.

Monday 27 February 2023

Overcast but not raining. We have booked the Queen Charlotte Mail Boat Run for this afternoon – a 4 hour trip around the Sound. It doesn’t leave until 1.30pm so we spend the morning strolling around the dull shops and sipping coffee. The rain has stayed away and there are moments of sun. Things are looking up for our boat trip. We make a sandwich for lunch on board and saunter to the dock to board at 1.30pm.

This truly is a mail boat, but there are probably 150 people on board to witness every drop.

Many of the locals receiving mail are assisted by their mail or male or female dogs

The Marlborough Sounds, or Queen Charlotte Sounds, are truly beautiful and very tranquil.

I know that you know, as I knew (not) that Queen Charlotte was the wife of King George III, otherwise known as the Mad King. They had 15 children together before his mental illness manifested. It’s frankly little wonder that she didn’t succumb to the madness, after all those kids. And what a shame she didn’t send them all into the supermarket to secure an egg each. Charlotte was steadfast to George until he died. James Cook named this Sound in her honour.

There are so many isolated houses around the Sound.

Some of them are truly isolated, just a single cottage in the middle of a forest half way up a mountain. We saw a number of these but resisted photographing them as they are obviously safe houses for cartel members and we were not sure of what surveillance equipment they had.

All of these houses can only be access by water, hence we see all sorts of craft out on the sound

Captain Jason never has his microphone far away from his mouth, but occasionally he learn really interesting things. Like these sea birds, which are indigenous to NZ, and on the World Endangered List, can only be found here. There are apparently only 600 of them left in the world, so by my reckoning what you see here represents 4.85% of the worlds population of these birds

Regrettably I am unable to tell you the name of the bird. We asked Jason twice but his answer was indecipherable each time. Is that part of the act?

We saw fish, dolphins, fur seals, and so many birds. We saw untouched forests, forests ruined by man and commercial pine plantings

We disembarked for 15 minutes at Cook’s Cove

Whilst the rest of the 148 folk photographed the memorial to Capt’n James, we were more interested in the huge number of opened mussel shells lying around on the beach. Big picnic for someone I thought. But no, these are mussels harvested and cracked open by, curiously enough, the Oyster Catcher

Our captain could not explain why the bird is called an Oyster Catcher and not a Mussel Catcher, but there you have it. Quite shellfish of him actually

Cherrie loves this photo, so I’d have rocks in my head not to include it here

Coming back home we see the future America’s Cup crew in training. See how tiny those little sailing boats (VJs?) are against the other boats, and our late ferry

I’ve never been comfortable on the water but in NZ I seem to have found my Sound legs

The end of another great day on the South Island of beautiful New Zealand