Marlborough, New Zealand

Marlborough
"A whale of a time in the wine and food capital of the country . . . ."

Each year a major event on the foodie calendar is the Marlborough Wine and Food Festival . . . and for good reason. From vine and briny, farm and field this area produces some of the best foods and finest wines in the country.

That alone is sufficient reason to tarry a while, but there are others. It is also has a smorgasbord of outdoor adventure pursuits . . . especially at Kaikoura, somewhat south of the region towards Christchurch.

Getting There

From Wellington

Picton is the southern terminal of the Interisland Line ferries across Cook Strait.

Blenheim is also a major provincial airport with flights to and from all parts of the country every day.

If you're in a hurry to get to Picton from Wellington catch the Sounds Air Express. Not a lot dearer than a ferry ticket, and a whole lot faster. It's even nearly as scenic.

From Christchurch

By road. Along SH 1 passing through the rich grazing land of North Canterbury and Kaikoura. If you're not driving yourself, take one of the shuttles that ply every day twixt north and south.

By train. The Coastal Pacific trains runs every day. Departs Christchurch at 8am, arriving Picton at 1.20. Departing Picton at 2.40pm, arriving back in Christchurch at 7.30pm

Getting Away

Assuming you're travelling south you can travel down either the east coast through Kaikoura to Christchurch, or west to Nelson and Golden Bay, or sou'west through St Arnaud and the Buller Gorge to Westport and the West Coast.

If you elect to go through Nelson there are two routes available: The main road (which is longer but quicker) through Blenheim, or the Queen Charlotte Rd which picks its way through some spectacular coastal scenery. My choice is the latter, though it means Blenheim must be a side trip.

Picton

At the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, Picton is best known as the southern terminal of the Cook Strait ferry.

The Sounds are drowned valleys - this part of the country was originally located about Milford Sound somewhere but the shearing, buckling, crunching battle of the two tectonic plates that meet here - the Australian and the Pacific Plates - have wrenched the island in twain along the line of the Southern Alps. These mountains are the result of the head-on collision of two of the planet's most ineffable forces. Having been thrown up by this clash of the titans, they sank back again and the waters rushed in to create a superb marine environment.

If you arrived by sea you've probably had as good a look at the area from the water as you need, but if not take one of the Cougar Line cruises. Or take a day's trip with West Bay Water Transport - these guys are just sensational. Nothing is too much trouble. If you need a water taxi, or you are looking for a lift somewhere in the sounds, this is the company to call. Ph 03-573-5597.

If you'd like a closer look you can hire everything from a canoe to a sail-it-yourself motor sailer from various operators on the Picton wharf. Take a low and slow cruise in a sea kayak - contact Sounds Wild at Havelock or Marlborough Sounds Adventure Company in Picton. Compass Charters. have a range of vessels from runabouts to keelers. For larger vessels, - bareboat, skippered or learn-and-sail - try Charterlink.

There are other water-based attractions here, not surprisingly. Dolphin Watch will take you . . . dolphin watching (also not a surprise!). Pete and Takutai Beech, a local Maori couple, can take you out on one of their Myths and Legends Eco-tours on a 70 yr old classic launch. Ph 03-573-6891. Have a day's fishing with Sounds Connection. They depart daily. Ph 0800 PICTON (742-866). Divers World offer diving trips to a number of unique destinations including one of the biggest diveable cruise shipwrecks in the world, the Mikhail Lermontov which sank while cruising off the South Island coast in 1986. Other dive operators include Affinity Charters Limited or Elusive Charters. Fancy something faster? Take a jetski tour of the Sounds - anything from one hour to seven days - with Steady's Jet Ski Tours, Ph 03-572-8559.

Off-the-water activities? Take a mountain bike ride, one to six day options, with Planet's Edge Mountainbiking.

Trekking? Instead of taking the rather heavily trafficked Abel Tasman Track, why not try the Queen Charlotte Walkway. The 58km track will take about three to four days - but you can also do just bits of it as day walks, jumping from one point to the other with local boat services. Suitable for people of all ages and average fitness. It picks its way from Anakiwa to Ship Cove through sea level forests and along ridge tops with views on both sides to Queen Charlotte and Pelorous Sounds. From Picton get a lift with West Bay Water Transport who run a daily service to/from Anakiwa and other points. For a ride in from Ship Cove, the northern end, call on Endeavour Express Ltd.

Blenheim

This is one of the country's great grape growing areas (See below). But there are one or two other attractions.,

The historic Molesworth Station is NZ's largest farm, stretching across tens of thousands of hectares of country between Blenheim and Hanmer Springs to the south. Historic, but financially a disaster. The Government runs it these days.

(A friend of mine, Stuart Masters, in his younger days, spent many a summer roaming across the wild expanse of the Molesworth. In later years he always said that if the Government were ever to give him some kind of honour he wanted a dukedom because that carries a grant of land - and he wanted Molesworth! "The Duke of Molesworth" has quite a ring to it, yes? In the end, he opted for the next best thing - bought the derelict St Helens Station homestead at Hanmer Springs which backs onto the great Molesworth spread. St Helens is now an absolute showplace.)

You can take safaris across the Molesworth with Back Country Safaris.

The Wines Of Marlborough

Gold, silver, bronze . . . the medals fairly rain upon Marlborough wines from all corners of the globe. And for good reason. Ask a wine expert anywhere and they will agree that this region is one of the great wine growing areas in the world, especially for white wines.

The Marlborough area is a late developer in winegrowing. Until Montana came down here in the70s it was unheard of. After all it is nearly half way to the South Pole. But micro-climates in pockets here are similar to the Rhine region of Germany - hence the predominance of white wines from this area. The region today has over 60 wineries and over 300 independent growers. Click here for a list of the wineries.

For a wine tour of the leading vineyards contact DeLuxe Travel who will, in a half day take you through a selection of wineries but also including a chocolate shop, and a wine tasting lesson - Ph 578-5467. Highlight Tours take smaller groups and can therefore tailor-make a given day to fit the wishes of the passengers. If you'd rather do it yourself, call at the Blenheim Visitors Centre at The Forum, Queen St, in the centre of town for a wine trail map.

But why not get on yer bike and ride! Over 30 Wineries can be explored by bike along the quiet back roads within 10 km radius of Blenheim. The terrain is flat as - and you don't have the problem of driving under the influence of too many taste samples. Wine Tours By Bike will put it together.

Marlborough Foods

Grapes aren't the only crop from this region. One of the more unusual is garlic. About 120ha - say 500 acres - are planted each year. Apart from local use it is also exported to the Pacific Islands and in some seasons a lot goes to Australia.

So there it is - Blenheim, the garlic capital of the South Pacific.

Marlborough also grows mussels like nowhere else. Out in the waters here there are 900 million mussels agrowing.

If you are travelling between Blenheim and Nelson you'll pass through Havelock. To try mussels at their finest stop at "The Mussel Boys" restaurant. You'll pick it easily . . . it's got two rugby teams of mussels on its roof. Yeah, yeah - that's right. Two mussel rugby teams! Two guys own the restaurant, a South African and a Kiwi. For the uninitiated, Suid Afrika and New Zealand are arch rivals on the rugby field. These are the pre-eminent national rugby teams in the world. So in such a two-nation business partnership rugby is one of those topics that comes up from time to time, like nearly every day. Now it also so happens that mussels come in two colours - green mussels and black mussels. Hence it seemed perfectly natural for these two enterprising restauranteurs to put large mussel models on the roof - 30 of them. Fifteen green ones representing SA and opposing them 15 All Blacks. The perfection of the naturalness may escape the rest of us, but, hey, it's a great promotional gimmick.

Couple of other foodie specials: Prices Traditional Preserves at Rapaura just on the outskirts of Blenheim has the most wonderful sauces, jams and preserves. Nellie Jukes of Nellie's Originals in New Renwick Rd also does preserves, and especially her pickled garlic which is just out of this world.

Kaikoura

But a few years ago this was a sleepy little hamlet on the Kaikoura Peninsular which sticks out of the north Canterbury coast like a hitch-hiker's thumb. Then somebody noticed that whales were common visitors to the area and started taking tourists out to see them. The rest, as they say, is history. Kaikoura suddenly found itself square in the centre of the world eco-tourism trail, much to the general enrichment of locals and visitors alike. In different ways of course.

The peninsular was named by a Maori named Tamatea Pokai Whenua. He was chasing some of his runaway wives . . . I kid you not - Sensitive New Age Guys were not invented then . . . and stopped here for a meal of crayfish. The full name of the peninsular is Te Ahi Kaikoura A Tamatea Pokai Whenua - the fire at which crayfish were cooked for Tamatea Pokai Whenua. Kai is Maori for food and koura is crayfish - and that's what, above all else, the area is famous for. The crayfish - overseas they're known as spiny lobsters - live in and under the rocky crevices along the coast.

There are two types of salt water crayfish. The more common spiny lobster which is red with purple markings and becomes uniformly red on being boiled, may reach a length of 50cms - about 20 ins - for males and about half that size for females. They are not dissimilar to lobsters, but they lack the lobster's powerful nippers.

The other species is the smooth tailed green or packhorse crayfish. It's not found here - the warmer waters of the north are its favoured habitat - especially around Coromandel and the coast of Great Barrier Island. It's much bigger than the spiny - frequently exceeding 600cms - 2ft - in length.

Both species are sought for export where the delicate flesh of the tails fetch high prices. A crayfish gourmet, however, would tell you that it's the legs that contain the sweetest part. You crack them in your teeth and pull out the meat. Ohhhhh, yeah!

Unfortunately, heavy commercial exploitation has knocked the resource pretty badly - even in Kaikoura's bountiful fields - but even so 1000 tonnes of crayfish are landed each year.

If you want to taste this delicacy, one of the best ways is to buy them direct from the fisherman. At various points along the road you'll see signs which announce "crayfish for sale". You buy them ready cooked from these roadside stalls - what a fantastic picnic lunch they make. Washed down with some of Blenheim's wines. Take it up to the lookout point in Kaikoura, and dine al fresco with a magnificent mountain panorama spread before you. Man that's really livin'. I mean really livin'.

They are only available between September and March though there is a small run in May. If you haven't come across a roadside seller, there's a couple of places in Kaikoura township that have them all year round - fresh in season, frozen the rest of the time.

But let's get back to the whales. Few years ago a local couple started taking the occasional visitor out to see the sperm whales that congregate in the waters near here. Before long it blossomed into a major tourist business, catapulting sleepy Kaikoura into centre-stage on the tourist circuit.

The whales are for the most part adolescent males, waiting out their time between childhood and the time they will challenge for a place among the cows in the main pod.

Some basic facts. There is only one company that offers whale watching tours on the water, Whale Watch Kaikoura Ltd. That's because DOC (Department of Conservation) is very, very protective of the beasts and careful to ensure that camera-toting tourists don't get in the way of their natural lifestyle. Bookings are absolutely a must because of limits on numbers. You can not just roll up on the day and jump a boat.

Apart from the launch cruises, you can also see them from the air on either fixed-wing planes with Wings Over Whales or helicopters with Kaikoura Helicopters, Ph 0800 674 181

In addition to whales you'll also see seals, dolphins, albatrosses and occasionally orca or humpback whales.

If you'd like to get a closer view of these creatures in the wild, go swimming with the seals. Call Seal Swim Kaikoura, 03-319-6182.

Or to swim with dolphins try Dolphin Encounter 03 319 6777.

The area is also arguably one of the world's most exciting arenas for pelagic (ocean going) birds. Within close proximity of the beautiful Kaikoura Peninsula, range a considerable array of albatross, petrels, shearwaters, terns, shags and gulls . . the largest number of different species of seabirds within a small area than anywhere along the New Zealand coastline. See them with Ocean Wings.

Kayaking is always an up-close-and-personal way to see the sea. The local option is Sea Kayak Kaikoura (didn't need a degree in rocket science to figure that out, did it?).d

What else? How about a couple of land excursions to fill in time between sea-going adventures? A must is the Takahanga marae which has some excellent Maori art. Fyffe House, a survivor from the days when whaling was the major industry here, is worth a visit.

Now here's the makings of a memorable moment. Buy some crayfish - preferably from one of the little caravan vendors along the coast road. Get a loaf of French bread in the township, a bottle of wine from Kaikoura Wines (you'll find them on top of the limestone bluff 2km south of the main Kaikoura township, just before the golf course). Then go up to the lookout on the peninsular and have a picnic lunch or summer evening dinner with the sheer majesty of the Kaikoura Ranges as a backdrop.

For more tourist information: Kaikoura Tourist Information.

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Home Page

All you need to know about a visit to the place where God set the contrast and colour and man hasn'nt fiddled with the dials.

Introduction

What, hopefully, you'll get out of this mish-mash of peripatetic ramblings.

General Information

Background bumpf on the country.

Getting In

Visas, customs, immigration, duty free shopping, and getting away from the airport. Bloody important if you don't want to be arrested on arrival.

Getting Around

Moving on . . . by road or rail, by air or by sea.