Sunday, February 12, 2006

Wine Tasting

Hey there, after our long drive up the west coast we did another long drive across to the East coast and stayed a night in Kaikoura where one can go whale spotting. However the weather was rubbish and we decided it wasn't worth the cash so we headed up to a small town called Renwick which is in the heart of New Zealand wine country.

The next day we hired bikes and visited 7 different vineyards and got free wine tastings at all of them. We were getting 6 or 7 small glasses at each place so needless to say our bikes got progressively more unsteady as the day progressed. We were drinking 12-15 pound bottles of wine from one of the best places in the world for white wine so it was all very drinkable. It would have been nice to stay longer really, there were 41 vineyards within 5km of our hostel and we only managed 7 but we had to press onwards to Nelson and the Abel Tasman national park.

Yesterday we did a quick 7 mile hike in Abel Tasman. Upon arrival it was raining and we feared we might have our first rain-off of the whole trip but fortunately it cleared up. We took a water taxi up the coast and then walked back along an elevated coastal track which occasionally ran along the coast but also showed a preponderance for going inland. By the time we finished we were knackered though suze wants you to know she did very well!

From there we drove to Picton where the ferry to the North Island goes from which we caught this morning over to Wellinton, the capital. Today we explored the town a bit and met up with a couple we trekked with in Vietnam which was cool. We're going to take the north island a little slower than the south so tomorrow we're going to spend another whole day in Wellington, craziness!

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home