Napier, Martinborough and Hawkes Bay

Hejsan alla där hemma, and everyone else!

Today is the 2nd of April and I'm now in Auckland, which is the biggest city in New Zealand. Tomorrow I will fly south to Queenstown and Central Otago to work at Felton Road, for about three weeks, then I'll return to Auckland again before flying home to Swedala!

Art Deco and Wine! (25th-30th of March)

Arrived to a warm and sunny Napier with Åsa (my Swedish travel mate) we got a room at Archie's Bunker a nice Hostel in the center of town. We took a stroll through the city down towards the supermarket to by some food for dinner. Napier is a really cool little city on the east coast of the North Island, because of a big earthquake inn 1931 most of the buildings in the center of the town are built in the Art Deco architect style.
Back again at the hostel I discovered that the kitchen was not of very high standards, hungry as we where this became quite frustrating before I finally managed to make a noodle stir-fry.
Even if the kitchen wasn't that well equipped there was very nice people sitting there, we meet a couple from Barcelona who did a around the world trip together. On Thursday we took a walk up to a view-point with our new friends from Barcelona, and then we had a beer together at an Irish pub. Then I booked a rental car for a few days so that I could drive around and visit wineries.

Early on Friday morning I got into my rental Nissan and started driving south towards Martinborough. After approx three hours I reached the small town of Masterton where I booked a room at a hostel and then had a nice steak sandwich for lunch. Back an the road again I drove on towards Martinborough and Escarpment where I had an appointment with owner and winemaker Larry McKenna. Arriving I got a quick tour of the vineyards (only two days before harvest began) and he also showed me the small but nice winery, where his crew was cleaning everything extensively before harvest. Larry had no wines open for tasting but he had grapejuice samples of Riesling, Pinot Gris and six different clones of Pinot Noir. Trying grape juice is very different than trying wine the main difference you could pick up was intensity and acidity, but a nice experience. Saying goodbye to Larry I got two bottles of wine to try with food at a later time. Then I drove back to the town of Martinborough and stopped by a wine shop to see if they had any wines from the famous "Dry River" they had three different white wines so I choose the Pinot Gris.
Next day I had breakfast at the same place where I had lunch the day before. I also got my hopes up because I saw a poster that said "Flight of the Concords" where playing in Masterton the 31st of March. I off course had to check if they had tickets but to no ones surprise they had sold out in just a few hours :-(
Never the less I took the car to the Stonehenge of New Zealand quite interesting as they've built a replica of the British original. After the cultural indulgence I drove back to Marinborough to visit Ata Rangi sins i read in a wineguide that visiting Martinborough to try Pinot Noir and excluding Ata Rangi would be "like visiting the Louvre and skip the Mona Lisa". One could probably phrase it different but there Pinot Noir was defiantly among the top ones on New Zealand, for the price of 65 NZD I still think the 2007 (with just a few years in the cellar) would give any good quality Bourgogne a good fight.
After visiting one more winery in the area i decided to head back to Napier, where i meet up with Åsa that had just been to the cinema! Then we struggled for a while to find a Art Deco restaurant that Åsa had seen the day before on a guided tour she took in the city.
On Saturday we took the car to the farmers market in Hastings (nearby city) and had some coffee and also did some shopping for dinner. Then we drove to Te Awa winery and tried all of there wines which was really good, we also stayed for an excellent lunch. To finish of the tour we visited Seleni Estate a quite big family owned winery. I tried 6 different wines and they where mostly renowned for there Merlot which I would agree was there best wine.
Back home at the hostel I cooked entrecote with a nice salad from all the veggies we bought at the farmers market, Åsas friend Yuka (Japanese) joined us for dinner.
Last day in Hawkes Bay I drove to famous Craggy Range, surprisingly the girl that had helped us with the tasting at Te Awa was also working here so I meet her again. Craggy Range made very high quality and also very elegant wines, with good concentration of fruit but not at all over extracted but just very elegant and balanced. So If you're in to wine and don't mind spending a a little more than usually Craggy Range is definitely wort the money. My next stop was Elephant hill which was a very recently opened winery, that planted it's first grapes in 2003. The wines have to be judged accordingly and where not great by any means but very clean and well made with good potential. I had a nice lunch on the patio in the sun :-)
My last wine adventure of the day was Trinity Hill, which had a great number of different wines, Montepulciano, Pinot Gris, Tempranillo, Bordeaux blend, Pinot Noir and Syrah för att nämna några :-) The best one was there prestige Syrah called Homage which had been given a good amount of Parker (American wine-writer) points.

To conclude I've had nice sunny weather and tried allot of nice wines the last week, most pleasant surprise is the very nicely blackpepper fragrant Syrah's of Hawkes Bay.

Ha det toppen!!
/Martin

Bollywood club in Wellington, Tongariro crossing and skydive over lake Taupo

Hej, hej allihopa everybody!!
Have had some great times, the last few days. After arriving to the windy city of Wellington on Wednesday and dragging my heavy bags on to the city bus to go to my hostel, I wandered around in the city to find somewhere to eat. To no ones surprise i found a Japanese Restaurant that looked good :-)
Second day I met up with Asa (that's at least the name she travels by in NZ) and went for a "fika". We also went for some outlet shopping and later to meet up with some newly found friends for beer at Mac's Brewery. We also decided to stay for some Wellington Friday nightlife, and also to spend a few hours at the "Te Papa" Museum.
After yet another Japanese meal at a recently opened restaurant, we headed for a Bollywood Club called Fusion, where we met up with Bjorn an Icelandic guy we met the night before. The club was great, right wen we arrived the had a dance show, where a few different people did some different dances like salsa and belly dance. Then the played a mixture of Bollywood music, middle eastern music and salsa for the rest of the night.
Early on Saturday morning me and Asa took the bus to National Park (there is in fact a town on the north Island by that name). Arriving some 5 hours later to the desolate town of National Park and our nice hostel, the weather gods seamed to like us and our spirits was high sins we planned to do the Tongariro Crossing the next day.
Waking up really early next morning to catch the early 7.00 am shuttle bus, that was driving us to the starting point of the track. The walk should take about 8 hours so we where in for a whole day of adventure, the weather looked allot nicer than the forecast and the morning light made the volcanoes look absolutely stunning. The first 1,5 hours of the track was slightly uphill to start with an finished with a quite steep climb up onto the volcano plateau.

The nearest volcano Mt Ngauruhoe with it's 2291 m (Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings filming locations) was an extra challenge that I convinced Asa that we at least should try to climb. The ascent was difficult because it was steep and surface of the volcano was like walking on a stony sand dune. After a little more than 1 hour we where about 3/4 on the way up and decided to stop for lunch, but then some clouds moved in over the summit of the volcano and we also had quite a long way still on the main track to walk so we decided to go down again.

Forty five minutes later we where back on the track again to start the ascent to Red Crater. Reaching the summit of Red Crater the views where amazing, with all the different colours and crater lakes and lava rocks that was spread out beneath us. I took tons of photos and also just stopped everywhere to just take in the surroundings.

The summit of Red Crater and the next 2km of the track was the absolute highlight of the Tongariro Crossing and the No 1 thing that made all the effort worth while. After that it was only 3,5 hours of walking left to get back to the car park, which we reached just at same time as the bus was scheduled to pick us up. Back at the hostel I took a very nice shower, and then cooked some pasta with tomato and tuna sauce, that we had together with a nice Sileni Merlot.

Time to Leave the National Park, which demanded that we chartered a private shuttle bus, to get to Taupo. The nice British driver picked us up at 12.30 and drove us door to door. The name of the hostel in Taupo was Rainbow Lodge, a really nice place with good reviews in the BBH (en vandrarhemsorganisation) guide. The big thing to do in Taupo is Skydiving, and lucky enough it was beautiful weather upon our arrival, so we decided to go ahead and book right away.

We still had around two hours to kill and we also needed to have some lunch so we decided to go shopping, my plan was to cook a noodle stir-fry. While preparing the lunch I got a lot of admiring spectators watching closely as i tossed the noodles around in the pan. Asa my Swedish travel mate beamed with pride and said she was so lucky to have a chef as a travel partner.

Just minutes after swallowing the last pieces of our lunch we where of to do the skydive! Arriving we head to decide which altitude we wished to jump from and how many DVD movies or pictures of the jump we wanted. I decided on 15000 feet and the so called "Full Monty" which included 2 DVD:s, 1 CD with pictures and a T-shirt.

Sins we (Me and Asa) decided to do the Full Monty we immediately got geared up and put on the first plane. The thrilling flight up to 15000 ft (ca 4700m) was in a small propeller airplane together with a few other people that jumped of at 12000 ft, the so called "Pöbeln". The jump can just be described as F***ing Amazing!! The best adrenaline rush of my young life! But the 60 seconds of free fall seamed to be over in half the time.

Landing safely a few minutes after jumping from the plane you felt so energized and ready to go back up and jump again, a similar feeling to riding a really good rollercoaster for the first time :-)
Then we had a really good time watching our DVD:s after the jump, Asa especially liked her video.

That pretty much sum's up the experience of the adventures between the 18th to the 23rd of March.

Ha't så Gött!!

18/2 DAY 10 Punakaki "Pancake Rocks + Fish & Chips"

Hejsan,

The 10th day of my Active New Zealand trip started with breakie at 7.30 in the morning, before we boarded Nancy to drive north along the west coast. Our first stop came quite fast, as a beautiful morning mist was hovering over a lake that we past, quickly out and in to take a couple of photos.

Next stop was in the small town of Hokitika where we had aprox 1 hour to stroll around in the shops or have a coffee. I took the oportunity to transfere some of my photos to a DVD, to get some free space on my memory cards.

Then we made a longer stop in Greymouth to visit the Monteith's brewerie, we had a one hour tour of the brewerie. The tour ended in a pub where we got to taste all the different beers they made :-)

After the beer tour we drove north to Punakaki where this days main event was a hike through some of the temperate rain forest. Just a stunning experiennce with lime stone cliffs (kalkstensklippor) big ferns, and djungel like mixture of plants and trees. The trail took about 2 hours and ended with a river crossing that got our shoes soaking wet.

After checking in to the motel me, Callum, Shelagh and Amy went for a swim at the nearby beach. Big wawes and decent water temperature made it a really mnice experience. Back at the Motel it was time for a shower before we headed to a restaurant to eat the National dish of Fish and Chips (Much like in England). Before dinner though we had a quickk stroll along a coast walk to look at the lime stone (kalksten) formations by the sea called "Pancake Rocks".

Back at the motel it was time to organize the packing for out three day hike in Nelson Lakes National Park, an adventure that I will describe for you later :-)

Ha re toppen!!
/Martin

Marlborough by bike

Hejsan allesamman!!

Right now I'm sitting in a rainy Wellington, on the southern tip of the North Island. Took the 3 hour ferry from Picton today leaving Marlborough and the South Island behind me (for now) still hoping to return to Central Otago to pic grapes at Felton Road (keep your fingers crossed).
Helen Mowitz if you're reading this, please send me some good Wellington hints :-)

I plan to leave wellington behind and head north quite fast, to Tongariro National Park and then on to Taupo, Napier and Martinborough before returning to Wellington. That is at least how my plans look tonight :-)

The last 3-4 days I've been spending in Beautiful Marlborough, the biggest wine area on New Zealand. I stayed in the small town of Renwick at a hostel called Watson's Way Backpackers, run by a retired kiwi couple. I arrived quite early on Saturday, but spent most of that day indoors and listening to audio books, felt tired for some reason. Sunday I rented a bike to tour some of the wineries in the area. Thought I'd start with the most famous one first "Cloudy Bay" which had a nice cellar door (lokal som ar oppen for provsmakning och inkop av vin) where you could taste most of there wines free of charge. The careful way in which I took notes of all the wines I tasted made the ladies that worked in the Cellar Door some what suspicious, so they asked me If I was a winemaker :-) guess I wasn't dressed nice enough to pass as a Sommelier :-)
They had a couple of nice wine best was Pelorus (a sparkling wine), Te Koko (Barrel Fermented Sauvignon Blanc) and of course there almost iconic Sauvignon Blanc. Next stop was for Lunch at Franz Herzog ( a Swiss) a beautiful little cellar door with a nice restaurant. I had Salmon with Chardonnay which both tasted very good, especially the salmon. Then I tried three of there other wines for 10 NZ dollars, a Viognier, a Pinot Noir and a Bordeaux Blend. To my taste it was only the Bordeaux blend that was any good, the other wines was not good enough for there price.

Biked on towards the next cellar door Nautilus Estate, where I tried several really good wines among them was a decent sparkling, a nice fruity Sauvignon Blanc and three really good Pinot's.
Deciding that was it for the day I biked back to the hostel.

Next morning i biked up to Isabelle Estate, where i got a quick tour of the winery and then a tasting of all there wines. I have to honestly say that the wines from them that I've tasted before in Sweden seemed better, maybe they've changed something in the wine making?? The wines was still good though but not with the same power as before.
I took a lunch break at the hostel, eating some leftovers from yesterday, before I biked on towards Staete Landt. This winery is run by a Dutch (hollandskt) couple, and is very small so they don't have a cellar door but I called early in the morning and got an appointment for the afternoon. Ruud (the owner/winemaker) showed me around and let me taste all of his wines. Really very nice wines, good concentration of flavours and fruit and well balanced. He also explained that he didn't like to put all of his wines into screw cap bottles (flaska med skruvkork), which is more or less mandatory (mer regel an undantag) in New Zealand. All the wines where of equally good quality, but i was most impressed with his Pinot Gris (the best one in NZ so far), Riesling Auslese (beautifully light and clean) and the Syrah which smelled of freshly ground black pepper.
After that interesting visit I had to paddle my way back home, made a Udon noodel soup for dinner which I thought came out quite good.

On Tuesday I took the bus to Blenheim, where I had a real challenge carrying all my stuff from the bus station to the hostel, so much in fact that I decided to purposely leave a some of my old clothes behind this morning. My day in Blenheim did not involve any wine at all, instead i spent quite a few hours at a Internet place fixing some of the pictures I took at Able Tasman. Then I went for a long walk up some of the hills/mountains on the south east side of the city. The walk was well worth the effort sins I got a great view of the whole valley and took some nice photos.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet up with Asa, och prata lite svenska, a Swedish girl that I met on the bus to Nelson.

Resan continues!
/Martin

11-14 of March, Vineyards and Abel Tasman Kayak

Hej, Hello

A slightly older Martin is now happily writing this blogg :-) The last three days here in the Nelson area has been GREAT!! Weathers been warm and sunny, I've tasted some great wines and adventures have been awesome.

Started the morning of the 11th by booking a Kayaking trip on The Abel Tasman, and then went to pick up my rental car. Pretty wierd driving on the left side of the road I tell you. But I was crusing really slow and fortunately the car was an automatic, imagine changing gears with your left hand wierd to say the least.
After about 35 min i got to Waimea Estates, arrived an hour early and bided my time in the car. Meet with there assistant winemaker and tried 5 different wines and had a very nice lunch sandwich. The range i tried was called Spinyback, very affordable and also of good quality. They apperantly have tha chardonnay at Systembolaget which I can recommend buying. I especially liked there red Cabernet Franc/Syrah which was a very elegant wine with a lot of fruit and berry characters alongside nice smooth structured tannins and also a moderate alcohol level at 12,5 % (which I considered good).
Then I drove on to the upper Moutere, to a winery called Neudorf, where Tim and Judy Finn meet me for a tasting and an interesting walk around the vineyards. There Wines where absoulutly great, world class! they had a really nice off dry Riesling which at only 9% was as elegant as a Mosel. There Chardonnay (named Moutere) could easily beat chardonnays from Bourgogne in the same price range ( two of the best new world chardonnays I've tasted to date). Thay also made two different Pinot Noirs one at lower price made from younger wine and one from older vines "The Moutere" that was at it's young age 2008 a very concentrated yet elegant and mineralic wine, with dark berries and liquorice notes. Both these wines you can by for around 300 kr at Systembolaget (vintage 2006, which just serves them), if your up for a really nice wine experience just go for it!!

My Birthday started early next day with packing my stuff and having a quick breakfast before going to catch the bus out to Abel Tasman. After about 1 hour we reached Marahau the small village at the staring point of the National Park. We got fitted out with life west and other equipment and then we where loaded on to a boat (water taxi) that would take us in to Abel Tasman where our Kayaks where waiting.
At first I teamed up with an American girl called Monica, and we handled our double kayak so professionally so we got split up after about 30min of paddling. Instead I got in the back seat of a kayak with a British girl. The Abel Tasman is just as pristine as all of the other National Parks of New Zealand, with long sandy beaches, lush forests and crystal clear green water. We paddled into Lagoons and up streams, along side cool rock formations and just paradise beaches.

After about 2 hours of paddling we reached this small island with a fur seal colony and lots of birds, the fur seals are really nice animals and I got some nice photos of one of them scrubbing it self in the water. Then we had a nice lunch sandwich at one of the many stunning sand beaches, before headed out again. Some 1,5 hours later we had reached the goal of the day Onetahuti Beach and stopped to wait for our boat taxi back to our accommodation.

Me and an English couple (Jim and Carina) where staying the night at the so called Aquapackers, which was a boat hostel in Anchorage. We waited for a short while at the beach before the came with a small boat to pick us up, on the boat over I met a Swiz girl named Christina and her travel partner Johannes from Germany. On the boat over to the bigger boat where we where about to sleep I just asked what today's date was, and Christina told me it was the 12th :-) Funny enough I hadn't been thinking about it for a couple of days so I just then realized that it was my Birthday :-)
Getting a quick tour of the boat and assigned to a bed I hurried up to the bar to get a nice cold beer. After that I decided to go for a swim. Johannes and Christina joined me after making sure the water wasn't to cold. The really cool thing was that you could jump of the roof of the boat about 5 meter, which we of course did a couple of times.
Then we had a warm shower and waited for the dinner BBQ, we got steak, sausage, rice salad, cabbage salad and some kind of gratin and the food tasted really good. Then we sat up for 4-5 hours talking, and I had a great Birthday much better then I'd imagine I'd have on my own in New Zealand.
Next day I joined Jim and Carina after breakfast on the walk back to Marahau, where the bus was going to take me back to Nelson. The walk had a little bit of undulating but mostly very easy. We stopped at a few lookouts and also stopped for a swim at one of the beaches on the way back. In Marahau our paths separated but we exchanged emails so I hope to hear from them again. After a shower and a change of clothes I couldn't help myself from falling asleep, luckily some nice people woke me up and asked if I was going on the bus to Nelson.

Another Great day was at an end as I booked myself on a bus to Renwick and a bed at the hostel there.
Best wishes !!
/Martin