Kaikoura to Bleinheim

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Today our motel hosts encouraged us to consider doing a whale watch by air. He showed us pictures from one he and his wife had been on so we headed to the airport for a 11 am flight. Steve saw a brief glimpse but then the whale went deep. We were able to see hundreds of dolphins that were surrounding dolphin encounter boats.

We then moved on up the coast. At Ohau, there was a fur seal colony that was spread out all around the rocks. There were many sizes including little ones. There was a small pool in the rocks that we called the “kiddy pool” since a bunch of youngsters were frolicking like crazy. We have a lot of great pics.

Across the road a few hundred meters was a short walk to a beautiful waterfall. It reminded us of some of our favorite sites in the White Mountains.

From there we motored up the coast and of course saw more great scenery. We stopped for lunch at the Montana winery. This is the largest winery in NZ and has won worldwide attention for their products. I had an excellent pinot gris with lunch. We then did some tasting of selection of their wines. We still liked the Pinot Gris the best and would have brought it home. They sell their wines in the US under the Bancott label.

We ended our day at another Bella Vista hotel in Blenheim. We had dinner at the Marlborough Sports Club. This is a facility with 10,000 members and it is attached to the local convention center. We were able to sign in as guests and get a great meal for pretty cheap money. It was also interesting that when they built the facility they included a room for their RSA group. I believe RSA stands for Returned Service Association which is something like our VFW. We went in and viewed a sort of military museum with plaques of local veterans. The New Zealanders were with us in most of the wars we have been in. They were instrumental in the battle of Monte Casino in Italy in WWII.

So a nice relaxed pace today.