whale me! wine me!

i must open this blog with shocking news.
i have been informed that with my increasing years (of course i am less thana year off 30 now!) my brain power is failing, age has clouded my memory and i have made a humiliating mistake.
Grover was the cute blue try-hard one in Sesame Street. i was thinking of Oscar the Grouch. the car should have been named Oscar, not Grover. i realised that i had made this mistake when the husband, who never watched Sesame Street as a child (unbelievable but true) went on to google images on our first evening in Kaikoura to see what i was on about with my choice of name for the car and just quietly reported “Grover is blue.”. so convinced was i of my Sesame Street knowledge that I actually briefly thought that he was talking about the car, and had suddenly seen it in a different light as a different colour. it was then brought to my attention through a facebook post, and it seems i was very wrong.

but, we have travelled so far with the little car already, all the way from Auckland, that it seems wrong to change it’s name now. it also put up a sterling effort on Monday, and did try really hard, just like little Grover in the tv show. due to a bit of a school boy error we ended up testing the car to its very limits. we left Picton port on the South Island, with a ¼ tank of petrol, but there was a petrol station in every little town, so the husband made an executive decision to wait to fill up. the long and short of the story is that I had a nap, only to wake up and see that the weather had closed right in, we were in the middle of nowhere, and there was a very concerned look on the husband’s face. we were driving through stunning countryside, but the only thing either of us could focus on was the fuel gauge hovering over ‘E’. rain was hammering on the windscreen, the car was being buffeted by what we later discovered were gale force winds, and we ended up travelling all the way to our final destination without coming across another petrol station. by my reckoning, comparing the landscape outside the steamed up windows to the very basic map in my lap, we struggled on for about 50km on a totally empty fuel tank. that little car was like ‘the train that could’, and certainly deserves his name. it seems only fair that it is known as a try-hard Grover rather than a grouchy Oscar!

the ferry journey from Wellington to Picton on the South Island was apparently one of the roughest in years. this information comes to us courtesy of a very friendly but quite manic-crazy lady in the Subway in Kaikoura though, so perhaps should be taken with a pinch of salt. in the same conversation she asked us if we were planning on making babies on our trip, about 2 minutes after we had exchanged ‘hellos’, and then she followed with it with a shriek of “Myde in Nu Zeeland, hutched in Yoo Kay! Myde in Nu Zeeland, hutched in Yoo Kay!” and collapsed into giggles (please read aloud at the top of your voice to get the full effect!). so after the bumpy ferry ride, and the nail biting car drive, we were thrilled to arrive at Sunrise Lodge in Kaikoura, and even more pleased that they had availability. the friendly owners explained their only spare double bedroom had a broken heater, so they offered to cut us a deal on their studio unit which we gratefully accepted, and were soon settled in to the total luxury of a massive room with en suite bathroom, queen size bed, private kitchen unit, tv set, sofa and wi-fi, with a Subway next door!

we booked ourselves straight on to a whale watching tour for the next day, and then trotted down to the headland to spend some quality time picking over the rocks and staring at the slumbering seals. by this time the wind was still biting, but the sun was shining, and it was a real pleasure to sneak around and peek at these funny lazy looking creatures, with their strangely human mannerisms. the way they reach around to contemplatively scratch their bellies with a claw, or slowly lift their head to blink at you and yawn is utterly charming, even though you fully know that if you got between them and the water, or if they simply took a dislike to you, they have an impressive turn of speed and long sharp teeth and strong snapping jaws. we kept our distance, and got away with just some great photos!

the empty car park at the headland seemed as good a place as any to give myself a reminder driving lesson. it’s been 9 years since i’ve driven- i took my test at 20, but could never afford my own car as a student and haven’t ever needed to drive since living in London- and i have been pretty nervous at the prospect of getting behind the wheel again. however, within just a few seconds I was tootling off down the empty roads of Kaikoura happy as a pig in poop! the husband hasn’t been able to get me out from the driving seat since, though i think he is quite enjoying only having the responsibility of picking the soundtrack to our drives and the odd bit of map reading!

we took advantage of the private kitchen in our unit to make ourselves dinner, and had a lazy night in with a bottle of red and caught up on our emails. the following morning we woke up to a stunning blue sky with not a wisp or a hint of a cloud to be seen, and the snow tipped mountains that had been wreathed in greyness on our check in now formed a backdrop worthy of a film set. perfect whale watching weather! we caught our boat out from the South Bay, and despite warnings that the conditions may be a bit rough and cause sea-sickness we chose to sit at the front in the ‘roughest’ bit. perhaps naively, i thought growing up by the coast in Dorset, and spending many happy days on boats i would be fine, but the swell once we got started was pretty massive. my stomach was lurching into my throat after each wave, and the nausea started to kick in after about 20 minutes. thankfully, we got the sonar waves of a sperm whale pretty quickly, and the boat lumbered into position by the beast and shut off the engines. we got to watch this magnificent creature resting on the top of the waves for about 10 minutes, periodically spouting water every 15 seconds, and despite the swell lifting and dropping our boat dramatically all thoughts of sea-sickness were very far from our minds. it eventually breathed in and out a final time, stretched its body a little out of the waves and then slipped away in front of us, kicking its massive tail up and silently dropping away into the blackness. thrillingly, we heard the sonar for another 2 sperm whales during our trip and got to watch them dive too before we had to head back to shore. there was a brief promise of a blue whale on the way back, but unfortunately we arrived at the location it had been spotted a bit too late and this search proved fruitless. nonetheless it was a breathtaking few hours and difficult to comprehend how many of these massive creatures were swimming around in the deep below us, totally invisible to the human eye and just going around their daily business. i felt really honoured to be able to see these monoliths in their natural habitat, and only hope that they do not head the way of many other whales around the world and hit the endangered list.

we explored the Kaikoura area further in the afternoon, and enjoyed a New Zealand speciality called ‘pauwa’ (a shellfish akin to Abalone with a beautifully coloured shell, but a disconcertingly blueish-grey coloured chewy flesh- i must say, though i was pleased to try it, i remain to be blown away!) from a roadside BBQ stall and a delicious beer in the now roasting sunshine. we checked out a couple of viewpoints as the sun started to set, and headed back to our little studio as the evening chill set in for another cosy night in.

wednesday morning brought another longish drive as we headed in the direction of the world famous wine region of Blenheim, and our backpackers in the neighbouring town of Renwick. here we had vineyard plans, many serious vineyard plans, so on the way to Renwick we stopped off at the Montana vineyard to get warmed up and into the swing of things. i was a little unsure initially of how the wine tasting thing works, but with a friendly smile and ‘we’d like to try your wine please’ we found ourselves offered a selection of their best wines (too good to be exported to the UK!) and given a lesson about their history, and some tips on which wines to look out for next year once we are home.
once we had dropped our bags and checked in at our next stopover, a slightly twee but sweet spot called Watson’s Way, run by a couple of septegenerians (they may have crappy taste in interior furnishings and like having the lights switched off at 10pm, but they do have electric blankets which is a treat on these chilly nights!) we kept on the wine tasting trail.

we hit Mud House in the afternoon, a favourite brand of wine for both of us, where we bonded wonderfully with the lady at the cellar door. after initially saying that we could try one or two for free, but would have to pay for any more, we got her talking and ended up trying not just the 5 she had out on display, but another 3 extras of different vineyards and vintages to ensure we got a good comparison! in a grand finale, she pulled a little bottle out from under her desk, and said “Seeing as you are such fans of Mud House…”. she gave us a sample of a desert wine from 2006, a ‘Late Summer Riesling’ which is not available for sale, not available for tasting, but which they sometimes use in their restaurant and that she had managed to sneak away from the kitchen for the staff to taste. we felt really special, and it was utterly delicious. to the lovely Kathy in Mud House on Maxwell Street- we salute you!

getting in to the swing of things, we then walked to a little boutique vineyard near our hostel called ‘Te Whare Ra’. there we found a gorgeous, soppy hungarian vizla to play with, and were given another 9 wines to try. again none of these are currently exported to the UK, and all were a revelation. we even got to see behind the cellar door, into the room where the magic happens, and we learned all about the vineyard’s workings. it is such a small place that it is run entirely by 4 people, the owner and his wife (who was conducting the tasting, and explained that they met working in wines in Australia, but managed to escape the clutches of the wine giant Hardys to buy this, their own vineyard, 5 years ago) and 2 other permanent staff, and everything is made on site for relatively limited runs of their award winning boutique wines.

thursday, tomorrow, the weather is forecast to be sunny again and is a day we have dedicated even more fully to the wine tasting experience. we are hiring bikes so we can hit more vineyards without unwittingly drink driving, and doing it properly. god help us…. or god help the vineyards!

either way i can’t wait to continue my wine education, and maybe get a little tiddly along the way! i will report back as much as i can remember in the next blog!