Tiff & Jared's adventures

After weeks of traveling through and around the Southern Alps, the coast and various National Parks, our time in the South was coming to an end. It was bittersweet! Leaving Abel Tasman, we only had three days left before we had to be in Picton to catch the ferry to the North Island.

The first day was spent driving to Christchurch to switch out our car rental and that took the majority of the day. We decided getting two car rentals was best because our credit card companies cover rental insurance up to X amount of days, and if we had done one rental it would have been over the maximum amount of days. So, we did full circle and went back to Christchurch. Ironic that the weather was cold and wet just like when we first arrived in Christchurch over a month beforehand. We checked out a local brewery before heading north to Kaikoura.First picture above: trading in our gray Hyundai SUV for a compact car. Boo!

Kaikoura is a small coastal town known for its amazing marine wildlife. They offer various watching tours for whales, dolphins, and albatross. I really wanted to do a dolphin swimming tour but unfortunately the weather wasn’t great in Kaikoura either.

The first night we got in, we read about a place called Cooper’s Catch known for local seafood. It was a fast casual place with reasonable prices and since they were out of Kaikoura’s specialty, crayfish, we tried some fried scallops, prawns, and the classic fish and chips. It was pretty good! From here, we went back to our campsite on another beachfront holiday park. The spot would have been beautiful if it was sunny, a lot of degrees warmer and not so windy. We decided to sleep in the car because a tent would have had to brave too many conditions.

Waking up the next day, the clouds were a little clearer. It didn’t really rain that day but there was a constant overcast. One of the things we decided to do was the recommended Peninsula Walkway, a coastal walk to view the town’s resident seal colony. The walk diverged into two paths, and we walked a little of both. The first ascended up the coast and provided an aerial view of Kaikoura along the cliff walk. The second and more fun walk wove on the beach and got up super close to the seals and bird nesting colony. As you can see, we took many pictures. They got Jared’s seal of approval!

From here, we drove a few minutes down the road to Point Sheep Shearing for yes, a sheep shearing show. It was very informative as well as laid back; the farmer invited us into his barn where he explained the shearing process, the price of wool, and different types of sheep. Most sheep farmers in NZ sell their herd for meat, as the wool price is very low if you’re not producing merino wool. His sheep’s wool are used for carpet and sell at about $2 per kilogram. Doing the math, he makes about $12 per sheep per year. He started doing the sheep shearing show over two decades ago because that provides more revenue than selling the wool!

We probably watched for about four minutes before a super fluffy sheep was shaved down to a naked lady. Sheep shearing is highly competitive in NZ – on record, the fastest anyone has sheared a sheep according to him is 37.5 seconds! He let us feel the sheep for the lanolin that remained after all the wool was shorn. The lanolin is used in many hand and lotion products because it’s so soft. At the end of the show, we got some takeaway wool as a souvenir.

The shearing process does not hurt the sheep and is necessary to trim their wool twice per year for his breed, the Drysdale.

Last day in the South Island

We spent our last day in the South exploring the Marlborough region, known for plenty of sunshine, wine, one of the Great Walks called the Queen Charlotte Track and the four beautiful Sounds at the top. We hit three towns: Blenheim, Havelock and Picton. Our first stop was in Blenheim/Renwick as this is where the majority of the region’s wineries are. One super cool thing about a lot of the wineries is that tastings are free! Wineries are not quite the same as in the States. In the US, they’re more of a destination to go with friends and have a picnic for a few hours. Here, most of the ones we went to were the main production site and don’t offer glasses for purchase. They do free tastings and allow people to purchase bottles to drink on site. We went to five wineries: Yealands, Mount Riley, Framingham, No. 1 Family Estate and Spy Valley, for a total of 18 free tastings! We bought a bottle at Yealands which was probably our favorite. The vineyards stretched for over 2,500 acres and is the largest winery in Australasia.

Pictured above: overly friendly chickens. The winery uses them to help keep pest levels low.

The area’s most popular wine is Sauvignon Blanc so we had some of those in every tasting. For not loving wine, it really does taste good when it’s free! We got pretty lucky with weather that day so the sun definitely helped as well.

We also stopped at a hydroponics strawberry farm called Hedgerows in the middle of the tastings. They were completely sold out of strawberries (weird to think that’s such a popular fruit to have during Christmas) but one of the workers was kind enough to give us a tour of the glasshouses. The farming methods they use tend to waste far less water than traditional strawberry farming, and since they’re in an isolated environment, they’re not affected by climate change. However, it’s very important to monitor the strawberries because they’re still fragile. The lady pulled off a few and let us try them and man, they were delicious! After getting our fair share of grapes/strawberries, we continued onto Havelock for food. The town is known as the Greenshell mussel capital of the world! I don’t love shellfish but Jared likes them and I feel like we had to try it if it’s the capital of the world. We went to a famous restaurant known for mussels called The Mussel Pot and ordered a steamed pot with cream, wine, garlic and herb sauce. The sauce was delicious but I couldn’t quite get over the texture. The taste was good but I don’t think I’d get them again, Jared liked them though!

Tummies full, we continued on to Picton where our hostel was for the night. I wish we’d had more time in the area because there were beautiful hikes and tracks to do but we just didn’t have enough time. We did the scenic drive from Havelock to Picton and drove along the coast. By the time we got to Picton, it was evening and we hung out at the hostel and played ping pong and pool before going to bed. BED. This was our first bed in 25 days! Boy was it nice.

The next morning we woke up, grabbed a free scone courtesy of Tombstone Backpackers, and drove three minutes down to the ferry queue. The ferry ⛴ ride was about three hours from Picton to Wellington, and we traversed the Cook Strait before hitting open ocean. The views were beautiful and we even saw some dolphin!