We left Wellington before 8:00 a.m., sailing for three hours towards Picton, first town in the south island. We had a good last look of the city aboard the ferry, and enjoyed some free toast along the way. Jumped back in the van a few hours later and started the new adventure by trying to find a place to stay and maybe work (pruning some trees). It was a bit difficult to find the good combination, so in the end we skipped Picton and headed down directly to Blenheim. After a few tries and many inquiries about the work available in the area, Dana and I decided we wouldn’t work more because you need about a week of training to learn how to prune correctly and all the places weren’t very keen to hire us for only a week. Instead, we decided to stay one night at a Backpacker’s guesthouse (still sleeping in the van though), and do the famous wine trail the next day. Renwick, a small town about 15 minutes away from Blenheim, is the host of more than 25 wineries, 20 of them are in a 5 km range. The idea was to rent a bicycle for the day at the guesthouse, and hopefully enjoy a nice day to pedal around from one to the other. We were lucky and it turned out to be a splendid sunny day, a bit windy but nice anyways. We managed to stop at only five wineries, but there were at least seven different types of wine to try at each place, sometimes even more. I must say I had no expectations at all, but some of the wines (90% white wine) were surprisingly good and tastier than one could think. The wineries were pretty small, but most of them sell their wine commercially abroad, sometimes not to the local market at all. The wind really slowed us down in our attempt to visit as many wineries as possible, but it still was a nice experience and good day. We bought one bottle of Chardonnay at the end of the trip, in a really good place called Huia. All their wines were excellent, and by far the best quality in taste. Lots of flavour, even a little touch of vanilla for one wine in particular, truly amazing.
We slept in a parking lot that night and didn’t visit much of Blenheim, which looks like a nice place to live but not too different from any other “large” town visited previously. We called another guy we could go stay with for a few days in exchange of 4 hours a day of work and drove to his place the next day.
We slept in a parking lot that night and didn’t visit much of Blenheim, which looks like a nice place to live but not too different from any other “large” town visited previously. We called another guy we could go stay with for a few days in exchange of 4 hours a day of work and drove to his place the next day.
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