Penguins, Marborough, and the road north

According to mapquest, I could expect the drive north to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 13 hours, provided that things were running smoothly. This is quite a long time to be alone in the car with just the radio for company, so I decided to pick up a hitchhiker just outside of Dunedin. Alex was probably in his early 20's and had grown up in France. He had spent the last 8 or 9 months hitchhiking his way through Australia before venturing over to NZ and was on his way north to Christchurch to visit some friends before popping over to Nelson.

Debbie and Hamish had informed me of another spot along the road north were chances were very good I would run into Yellow-eyed penguins, so Alex and I took a slight detour from the road north to see if we could track them down. My instructions were a bit vague, I was to look for a lighthouse up a road in a small town at the second peninsula from Dunedin, but fortune was with us and we found it during our first attempt. Ordinarily I'm sure the place would have been overrun with tourists, but given the early hour we had the place largely to ourselves. It was approaching the end of the penguin nesting season, and the nesting areas were fenced off from the public. Of course, while a wooden fence might mean something to a human, it is little more than a curious looking tree to a penguin. We walked along the fence peering into the bushes but didn't see much. Turning around, I tapped Alex on the shoulder. The penguins weren't in their designated nesting area, they were all over the hill outside of it! You could tell they weren't going to be here much longer, the chicks looked fully grown and had shed most of their fluff, but we had timed it perfectly. It was penguin-tastic.

Back on the road again, Alex and I chatted about music and travelling, and life in general. He had gone to school to pursue sculpture, but had felt a bit disenchanted with the job prospects in the field and had started travelling, working along the way as he went. He planned on spending another month in NZ before returning home to France for a spell, earning some euros and then heading on to Mongolia (or maybe Montana). We exchanged some music info and email addresses, and I left him Christchurch around noon.

Waipara is another wine region just to the north of Christchurch that produces some great wine, and I wanted to stop there for lunch at a winery called Pegasus Bay. It was by far the most expensive meal I have eaten so far, but the grounds were beautiful and I met some folks from Wrigleyville in Chicago in their tasting room. Wallet lightened and belly full, I hit the road again.

The Waipara region is pretty dry, even more so given the season, and I passed lots of brown grass and irrigated vineyards beside bone dry rivers. The road wandered into some mountains, and the grasses were replaced by forests so dense that the hillside looked like it was covered with broccoli. I hit the summit and rushed downward towards the sea where the Pacific ocean crashed along black sand beaches and surfer towns. It was absolutely stunning. The highway continued to wind along the coast at the foot of the mountains, around cliffside corners and through tunnels before shrinking back into fuzzy grasslands once again. Patches of green began to appear amongst the rolling prairie hills, massive grape plantations of Savignon Blanc. I had reached Marlborough.

The main city in Marlborough is Blenheim, but I choose to stay in a hostel about 10km outside of town in the little village of Renwick, which was much closer to the wineries. There was a proper english pub in town where I chose to have dinner, complete with Yorkshire pudding and tasty ale. My dinner companion was a rather friendly stray cat who sat very patiently on the bench next to me, and after a spell a very old man came by and struck up a conversation about an Oregon wrestling team that had passed this way about 50 years before. His son was a beekeeper.

The next day I had appointments to go wine tasting and really get a feel for the wine being produced in the region. There is plenty of Savignon Blanc of course, but also some really fantastic Rielsing and even a bit of Pinot Noir. I tasted at some very large producers (6600 tons) and very small ones (50 tons), and learned plenty about what it means to grow grapes and make wine here. My favorite place by far was Te Whare Ra, a tiny little producer run by a husband and wife winemaking team who have two sets of twin girls at home (ages 4 and 17 months). How they manage to keep it together I have no idea, but they are definitely making some very special wines, particularly Riesling.

I ended the day at Fromm winery, the place that was largely responsible for my being in New Zealand. I had sent them a resume last fall looking for work, and though they were all filled up they were kind enough to pass my info along to several other top wineries, including Escarpment in Martinborough, which is where I ended up finding work. I had a beer with Hatch and Rachel (the winemaker and sales manager respectively), the perfect end to a perfect day. Really kind and gracious people, and great wines too!

I had toyed with the idea of doing a bit of tasting in Nelson (my next stop), but my palate and finances were a bit exhausted so I posted the remained of my non-backpacking gear up to Martinborough (where it would wait until harvest). I left Renwick and drove on to Nelson that afternoon, dropping my rental car off at the airport there. I had thought about spending the night and exploring the city, but Saturday is not a great time to find last minute reservations and the whole city was booked. Having no other choice, I threw my backpack on my shoulders, walked to the highway, and stuck out my thumb.