After spending a good 37 minutes in Picton, long enough to see some weird statues of faux Disney characters frightening children in the park, we jumped on the Intercity bus to Blenheim. We all want to say Blen-hime but it is Blen-um.
Several children fleeing in terror from a definitely-not-imitation Mickey Mouse statue.
Shortly after heading south from Picton, the landscape became fairly familiar to us. If I didn't know what country I was in, I would have guessed we were traveling through Eastern Washington in the US of A. Bleheim is in the Marlborough region of New Zealand which, like Eastern Washington, is wine country here. Rolling brown and green hills dotted with rows of grapevines make up the landscape.
We traveled halfway around the world to see Eastern Washington.
About 45 minutes later, our bus rolled to a stop, we strapped our heavy-ass packs on and trundled 15 minutes up the road to the Top 10 Holiday park. There were not many people there and we basically had our pick of a site. Sheamus set us up near the river and it was quite lovely. We put up our tent and moseyed into town.
Blenheim is a bit of a strange place. Light industry and a few commercial buildings encircle a downtown core of shops, restaurants, and a nice little park that follows the river through town. Luckily for us, one of the downtown stores is a Katmandu, where we could get some supplies and a new day pack for me. A wink and a smile for the clerk gave us free membership to the chain and 10% off our purchase. He then told us a story about a seaplane in Northern Australia that was eaten by a saltwater alligator. “Australia, a lovely place but super deadly.” I guess we'll find out in a few months.
In Australia, ducks are poisonous and more like raptors from Jurassic Park. In Blenheim, just cute.
Despite the assurances of everyone in New Zealand that it never rains in Blenheim, the next day was rainy and really windy. The wind has become a theme for our time in NZ. It nearly ripped our poor tent to shreds in the night. Anyway, we had already rented some bikes to go riding and wine tasting, so off we went.
Rain? Here? Ha, nope, never ever happens.
The first two hours were spent waiting out the rain. It eventually let up and we really wanted to get our drink on, so we braved the gale force winds and made our way to the bio-dynamic, organic winery Huia (pron. Hoo-e-ya). We were the only ones there so the tasting lady ran us the full gambit of wines. Evidently Marlborough is known for its white wines so we left a bit tipsy and burdened with a bottle of Pinot Gris. We peddled off to eat at Wairua (pron. Why-a-roo-a), then circled around to Hans Herzog winery (whose French inspired wines were meh), then skipped the rest of that wine crap for some beer tasting at Moa (pron. More)!
Wairua Winery had some good food and ambience. Didn't try the wine.
Moa Brewery is named after the giant bird that used to inhabit New Zealand. And I mean giant like 10 feet tall giant. They were killed off a few hundred years ago by the Maori, who hunted them quite easily and had massive feasts. Fast fact, they were also hunted by Giant Eagles like the ones in Lord of the Rings. They were large enough to fly off with a dead Moa, which they killed by flying into its side and puncturing its vital organs with its massive claws. Quite impressive really.
I'll have some more info about the actual beer at Moa (and a pic of an actual-size Moa sculpture!) and Dobson Street Brewery in Blenheim when I write part two of my Brews and Brews posts.
Instead of talking about wine, here's a wine trail map in case you ever need to find some wine in the Blenheim area.
All in all, Blenheim was a fine little town for a night or two but it really doesn't have all that much to recommend. Because I got a bit lazy, you should already have read about our next stop, Kaikoura, in the previous post by Melissa. I'll try to catch up and be in actual chronological order from now on.
No promises though.
I gotta say, even the small towns in New Zealand are pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty nice.