Mountains, Rivers, Sounds, Rainbows…and Vineyards
This is where we spent the last few quiet, peaceful, absolutely blessed nights on South Island, there at the tail end of 2013 with my mother and brother. These are the Marlborough Sounds; if you’re so inclined, google ‘linkwater marlborough’ and you will see exactly where on the map of the world the shots above were taken: at the base of the Grove Arm. With Howard and Gene, five years ago, we drove fairly rapidly through this area en route from Nelson to our Kaikoura Coast Trek, but I remembered it as a lovely spot well worth revisiting. Now I’ll remember it as one of those places on earth I could very happily live, or retire, if I could ever afford it. 🙂 A lovely mix of pastoral, agricultural, maritime, small-town, outdoor-adventure…you name it, you got it there from milk cows to fantastic kayaking and world class wines. (Wonder if NZ tourism will give me a cut for the referrals here…) Btw below are the panoramas giving you about a 280-degree view from the pier on which the above photo was shot.
At the moment, a soft rain is falling on a Port Moresby Sunday morning, and I expect only to wake up in Port Moresby (or PNG more generally) on only seven more Sunday mornings. After having done precisely that for most of the past 104 Sundays, this comes not as a shock, but as awareness of imminent change. Friends on the email list have already started hearing from me about the plans, and in the months after March this space will feature more of North America and Europe than the South Pacific. And I’ll hopefully spend a lot of time on my bike and in the yoga studio. For now, my goal is stay focused and keep things on a steady course as we head into the home stretch. That’s all I shall say now: enjoy these shots of the Marlborough Sounds and Marlborough wine region, and some of the west coast and central South Island mountainy areas we drove through getting from Christchurch up to Linkwater. Peace, out, more at some point…
All of these initial shots, up until the last photo of the bay with the green boat and the tree, which comes just after the display of mailbox pride in the Marlborough Sounds, are from the basic Linkwater area. If this appears correctly, below you see a rainbow and if you look closely you’ll note that it’s actually double rainbow. It was, in fact, the fullest, clearest and sharpest full double rainbow either Steve or I had ever seen. (Mom was napping.) After the mailboxes, you’ll see various photos taken of the mountains, rivers, and vineyards that extend around the middle of the island south of the Grove Arm and north-northwest of Christchurch, through which we drove on…the rainy 29th of December, to be quite accurate. Enjoy! Happy new year!
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- Cutout Bird Mailbox
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- Fish & Seaweed Mailbox
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- Songbird Mailbox
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- Udderly Moolbox
And here some shots again of the Cook Strait as we departed South Island and headed back to North Island: below, Picton Harbor from on board; and a few shots below the exit from Tory Channel into Cook Strait with North Island in the distance; and further down a panorama shot in which you see both North and South Islands from the boat in Cook Strait.
Ferrying Across the Cook Strait
smw, slt is spending the end-of-year holidays (solstichristmakwanzakkah, you know) in the company of my mother and one of my brothers, along the shores of lovely lake Wakatipu here in Queenstown, south-central South Island in the lovely nation of New Zealand. NZ rocks: I first visited here four years ago and l o v e d it; I’d move here in a flash if I met the right reason and/or if nearly everyone else I know in the world didn’t live at least a 12-hour flight away. Â NZ is very nearly the same size as Colorado in land mass — one key difference, of course, being that NZ is composed of a handful of big islands and hundreds of littler ones floating in the South Pacific, where poor Colorado remains firmly landlocked until global warming truly does its worst to us all — and has roughly 20% fewer inhabitants than Colorado. It has mountains as high, but unlike CO it also has fiordlands and tons of interesting glacial lakes, volcanic cones, a sub-tropical north, world-class wine regions, two species of indigenous penguin and the only mainland-based colony of ablbatross in the world (mainland meaning a large island with a big human population), and a LOT of fur seals. All of this adds up to many choices of wonderful places to visit in a short two-week holiday, which is all we have time for now. We started out in Wellington, capital of the this kewl little country showcased above and below; thence we hopped the ferry across the Cook Strait to the northern end of South Island. It’s this journey which is documented in this first post from my end-of-year holiday.
I apologize that these NZ posts will, of necessity, be broken up over several entries. I’ve got tons of shots of penguins, a few of flying albatross; I’ve got photos of waterfalls and fiords still to be sorted and color-corrected, and I really do ditch more than 75% of the shots I start out with. So there’s much sorting to do before I come up with another post for everyone. With luck I can post those as a new-year card to everyone. At the moment, it’s Christmas morning here and it’s lovely to be with family again. The news break is just carrying the update on South Sudan, which had started to look worrying before I left PNG for holiday. Since I’ve many friends working there, and in Central African Republic where tens of thousands continue to be affected by insecurity and violence, I find myself as usual a bit conflicted this Christmas morning: grateful that I can sit in luxury and comfort, surrounded by family, by the lovely shores of Lake Wakatipu (say that, slowly, out loud, a few times to start your day: it’s great fun, and yes rather juvenile)…and at the same time rather heavy of heart at how the world is so sorely and sadly divided into zones of privilege and comfort whose inhabitants tend to be unaware and unappreciative of how very lucky they are, and too much of the rest of the world where families struggle to stay alive, secure, healthy and well fed. I wish for us all in this sadly fractured world, as always, a bit more peace, health, and security in the year to come. Hugs, one and all.
Above are some of the shots exiting the complicated harbor at Wellington, whence one crosses the Cook Strait and tucks into Tory Channel, one of the many inundated valleys that form the Marlborough Sounds region on the northeastern coast of South Island. If it lays out as hoped, below you’ll see a shot where we’ve entered the Marlborough Sounds and left the rough choppy waters of Cook Strait behind; and a few shots of the drier, pastoral hillsides along the sound. Then at the end you’ll see a bit of an opening where the ship turns sharply right to enter the main channel of Queen Charlotte Sound, then sharply left again to enter Picton harbor; I took a shot looking back at the curve of our wake as we bid adieu to Tory Channel. And then, at the end, the shot Steve & Mom got suckered into buying when they did their Glow-Worm Cave Tour at Te Anau in the Fiordlands — having done that tour a few years ago, I didn’t repeat it but instead cooked them dinner. Ah, such a tour host am I… 🙂
Marvelous Marlborough
At the north end of South Island is a region called Marlborough. It’s New Zealand’s main (of several, for such a small country) wine-growing region, and home to Picton (a little town where the ferries from North Island arrive), and Nelson — to which Howard, Gene & I flew after regaining our bearings with a day or two in Auckland and a walk on Rangitoto Island (below — I’m messing with your minds if you’re trying to follow my itinerary here; I’m putting up regional segments based entirely on how visually appealing they are and how important they were to my experience in NZ…deal…). Nelson is just south and east of Abel Tasman National Park, for which we sadly did not have time; I’ve included, below, a few shots of what I think are the mountains from that beautiful area, as seen from our overnight hub of Monaco, on the Western edge of Nelson. I have included some of the nicest shots of vineyards around Nelson and Blenheim, a swimming spot along the Pelorus River (which, Wikipedia tells me, is known for its ‘magnificent’ river swimming – but we didn’t know that when we crossed the bridge in our rental car and decided we just HAD to join the folks at that swimming hole), as well as some shots of both the Pelorus and the Queen Charlotte Sound, which are among the Marlborough Sounds — yet another amazingly beautiful region on the northeastern corner of South Island, near Picton where those ferries from Wellington dock.
I think those mountains in the distance are in Abel Tasman National Park. Oh well, next trip…
This is the cute little town of Nelson (sidewalk rolls up, even on a holiday Friday, by about 22:00), above and below. Nelson gets more days of sun that most other parts of NZ. Which…well, isn’t necessarily saying all that much. 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 
