Queen Charlotte Track

The Queen Charlotte Track is a seventy two kilometer hiking trail that runs along the Queen Charlotte Sound. The sound is an inlet from the Cook Strait, and the town of Picton is at the end of it. That’s where the ferry connects to the North Island. This whole area is in the Marlborough Region. Marlborough is famous wine country, but these inlets and bays of the Marlborough Sound are spectacular. Straightened out, this little area has 25% of New Zealand’s total coastline.

New Zealand has nine “great walks.” The Queen Charlotte is one of them. You can walk the whole trail in five days, using the water taxis to transfer your pack for you, staying in lodges with hot showers and meals and beds every night. The water taxis are a fantastic system which you can use to hike any part of the trail that you’d like to. We chose to hike from Resolution Bay to Furneaux Lodge, a total of ten kilometers, a pleasant day hike. We got on the boat at 8:00 in the morning, and started hiking at 9:15. The Sound is calm protected water, the boat ride was smooth, and the weather was delightful.

There were a few other people on the trail, but we were mostly alone. We stopped for a break up at a viewpoint, and were soon joined by a couple of Wekas. These are New Zealand flightless birds who like to hang around humans. They are known for stealing things and going where they shouldn’t. This one tried to steal Monica’s hat. The wekas are declining in population, and people do tend to have a soft spot for them.

We reached our destination with an hour to spare. It was great to lounge a bit after the hike. We had met a family from Auckland in the morning, and we saw them again at the end. The dad (Ethan) had sprained his ankle on the walk, and Monica finally got to use some first aid to help him out.

Havelock

One day, we drove from Picton to Havelock, which is a small town on the Sound, about twenty five miles from Picton. There are bays along the way which are great for kayaking, because they are so beautiful and so calm. We hiked along an estuary trail near Havelock, and we saw white-faced herons, black swans, black stilts, pied oystercatchers, shags (those are cormorants) and best of all, royal Australasian spoonbills. Havelock is the world’s capital of green-shelled mussels. We had some for lunch after the hike.

Marlborough and The Savvy Blancs

Ahhhhh, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. You can drive for miles and miles and see vineyard after vineyard, rows upon rows of grapevines, most of them growing the famous savvy blancs. Crisp and fruity, dry and minerally, depending on the soil and microclimate, they just keep on coming. Eighty percent of the wine here is Sauvignon Blanc. Marlborough is one of the great wine regions of the world, though the wine industry started here only in the 1980’s. Where France prides itself on tradition, New Zealand prides itself on innovation. The winegrowers here have learned the old ways; a lot of the growers come from Europe. But they do not feel constrained by tradition, because here, really, there is no tradition. They experiment. They look for new ways. They are proud of that.

One of the innovations are screw caps. Screw caps??!! For wine??!! Get over it. Every single bottle of Marlborough wine (except bubbly) is topped with a screw cap. Every one. They have improved on the cork. The first screw cap here was in 2000. The industry had been importing cork from Portugal (like everywhere else) but a certain percentage of the wine was going bad. They started experimenting, and now cork is on the way to becoming obsolete. The image of an elegant sommelier deftly uncorking a bottle, as opposed to unscrewing it, might become a thing of the past. Capped bottles are easier to store, (they don’t have to be on their side) 100% safe in storage, (no more offering the gent a taste and getting his okay before pouring the bottle. I hate it how they always make the guy taste it first) and they are cheaper. (Hard to argue that one)

The Sauvignon blancs here are delicious. We went on a wine tour with a guide, and we talked and tasted wine all day. We went to five different wineries with him, then visited a few others on another day. At the tastings, the wineries tend to offer the best that they have. Some of their wines are exported, some are not. All are delicious. It’s amazing. Just grapes and a little yeast can taste like peaches, passion fruit, mango, grapefruit, and sometimes like grass and rocks. The grass and rocks are tremendous.

As a bonus to our stay in Marlborough, we learned how to play a card game called “Five Crowns.” Rhianna and Maya are the grand-daughters of our Airbnb host, and we spent a few hours with them playing, talking, and laughing. From here, it’s south down the coast, to Kaikoura.