Galavanting Globally

Wine and Fur Seal Pups, your average combination


We finally left the farm.  I know my dad personally thought I would never come out of the deep New Zealand bush, but alas we needed to explore the south island before we take off in less than a month for Bali.  Holy f word, where did the time go already?  

Donning our new rugged exterior (aka the lingering smell of sheep shit), we rolled out of the bush and down to Blenheim, the wine country of New Zealand.  Blenheim is purely known for their wine and if there is anything else to experience there we blatantly ignored it.  We spent the day on a biking wine tour, which sounds more official than what actually occurred; renting bikes, following the tourist wine map we were bequeathed and trying not to fall off our bikes as we ripped through one wine tasting after the other.  Now, it's been a hot while since I've been on a bike.  I spent this last year living in the hilliest part of Oakland and, being the fair weather biker that I am, have only ridden a handful of times in recent memory.  It's a good thing wine is an anesthetic, because my undercarriage (I think that's the nice way to say lady taint) was severely abused that day.  Owie owie owie.

Post wine tasting, we hitched down to Christchurch where we were meeting up with our friends, Miranda and Arden.  On the way down the black sand lined beaches of the east coast, we stopped at an inconspicuous pull out off the freeway in Ohau Point.  You would easily miss it, except our host in Blenheim had tipped us off to this little treasure.  It is less than a ten minute hike into the forest, where you come upon a majestic waterfall and fresh water pool full of baby seals.  That's right, baby seals in a fresh water pool.  I have yet to learn the exact logistics of how a sea bound mammal makes this transition, but I think it's fair to say that's impressive.  The mother seals give birth and then leave the little guys to play and live in this fresh water pool until they are old enough to leave the protection on the forest.  They leave them for long periods of time while they gather food, apparently not concerned with the humans who come to ogle their newborns.  Fact; it is impossible to stop giggling when you see baby fur seals walking through the forest.  I don't know what alternate universe I ended up in.  

We finally made it to Christchurch thanks to our new friend Ricky, the semi driver who graciously picked up our half frozen, rain soaked selves.  The trip was amazing and hilarious.  He even took us all the way into town and pulled us up right to the front door of our hostel in his big rig.  Luckily Miranda and Arden happened to be standing outside when our chauffeur hand delivered us in the lime green semi.  I've never had such a stylish, impressive entrance.  Limos be damed.

Poor Christchurch is as decimated as you might imagine after all of those earthquakes.  I have never been thanked to be a tourist until we got there, but they are stoked to have much needed revenue coming into the region.  It is going to take a long time to rebuild, but the city still maintains it's cool, almost Portland-like vibe even among the rubble.  

Off to Queenstown, the adventure tourism capital of New Zealand (which really means it's expensive as hell).  Maybe we'll launch ourselves out of a plane.  Maybe...