Sarah and I spent the last few days in Punakaiki and decided to ignore the internet completely. We did a lot of hiking, looked at lots of weird rocks shaped like pancakes, and got a lot of sunburn. It was glorious.
We cooked lamb and had venison sausages for breakfast every day.
Today was our last long day on the road. We drove from Punakaiki, up to Nelson, and then around the Marlborough sounds to Picton, then down through Blenheim and to Kaikoura.
In Nelson, we might have had a right-hand side driving uh…moment. It’s not my fault I really wanted to eat my snack from burger king and the right lane just happened to be blissfully traffic-free, unlike that pesky left lane. I casually swerved back to the left side just in time to turn right but keep left like a boss.
The Nelson-Picton route was full of wiggly little roads which overlooked a bunch of sounds (fjords? I was never paying attention when the kayaking dude told us the difference…) and the Cook Straight. We made it to the wine region with just enough time to visit two wineries…our top pick was unfortunately closed for the day.
Oh, the wine.
We started at Wither Hills and had a sampling of a few wines…I picked up two bottles there, and then five more at Cloudy Bay. Oops. Sarah also got all of my extra wine from the tastings. It’s part of my brilliant plan to get lost in New Zealand and never return to the states: get my navigator drunk.
Little did I know, Tipsy Navigator Sarah also points out all the sheep and cows we find, and the occasional horse. We played ‘one of these things is not like the other’ a few times. She’s pretty good at it, and only mistook rocks for sheep once.
And that brings us back to Kaikoura. A day of hiking and wildlife and seafood tomorrow…and then back to Christchurch. It’ll be great to see my host family again, but not so great to leave the springtime sunshine in a few days’ time…