Marlborough, From the Hills to the Sounds (Sep. 22 – 23)

On Saturday morning we awoke to the smells of Chris preparing a huge proper Kiwi breakfast for us. I’ll stop saying how nice they are because it probably embarrasses them, but damn. Eggs, bacon, tomato, potatoes, toast, you get the idea. It was fantastic. Full of a tasty breakfast, we made our way out to the Omaka Air Heritage Museum, highly rated by our brewing pals, Brian and Andy. It’s a nice museum featuring original and replica WWI-era aircraft. After the museum we went to the Wither Hills Farm Park, where we did a nice little hike in the hills above Blenheim. It was a good example of the sun-baked hills common to Marlborough as well as giving a good view of Blenheim. Parenthetically, the housing lots on the outskirts of Blenheim seemed ridiculously pricey to us: NZ$150,000 just for a decent lot, whew!

You could be the lucky owner of this fine piece of real estate

From Blenheim we drove just up the road to Picton, gateway to the Marlborough Sounds. The Sounds is an amazing bit of NZ geography at the top of the South Island: a range of rolling mountains half-submerged in the sea, creating an intricate waterway maze full of nooks, crannies, and hidden coves aplenty. During our time in Picton we learned that the Sounds make up about 1/6 of NZ’s coastline mileage, which is amazing considering it takes up a rather small area overall. Just as when we took the ferry from Wellington to Picton in February, we were again captivated by the unique beauty of the area.

I guess you could say the view of the Sounds from the harbor is 'Pictonuresque'

Our main purpose for taking Don and Linda to the Sounds was to do a portion of the Queen Charlotte Track, which in its entirety is a 71km walk along the ridges and coasts of the Sounds. We only had a day to hike so we took a ferry out to the farthest point on the track, Ship Cove, and did a 5 hour walk to Furneaux Lodge, one of the many lodges along the route. Though we didn’t really have gorgeous weather for the walk on Sunday, it really didn’t hurt much, as we were under canopy for a large portion, and the skies cleared markedly by the time afternoon rolled around. Though Queen Charlotte isn’t considered one of NZ’s Great Walks, it’s definitely a marquee one, and well worth the cost of the boat in Picton.

A rare moment of good weather on the Queen Charlotte track

After the largely flat but surprisingly long day’s hike (about 14km) L&D were pretty well bushed, so I think we accomplished our goal there. The ride back on the ferry was a welcome break, and we chatted with the boat captain at length on our way back. He showed us points of interest on the Sounds and took us by a local salmon farm that has been having heaps of seal trouble since its inception. Seals don’t usually live in the Sounds, but the lure of the tasty salmon has brought them there, where they’ve managed to outwit the aquaculturists many times over the past few years. They’ve also become aggressive, leaping into the workers’ quarters and chasing the workers throughout the facility. Sounds like a fun job, eh? Anyway, after a good day of hiking it was nice to have Linda prepare a home-cooked-ish meal, a roast beef (you can probably guess how many times Becky has ever made that) before we all passed out in our beds.

Mom and Don are on the run from the chickens