North end of the South Island

After a week on the North Island (I'll get back to that later), we flew from Auckland to Christchurch. Having plans to come through Christchurch a few times, we picked up our 1992 Toyota Corolla with vintage stereo from the A2B rental company (read "cheap") and headed straight out of town. Our target was Picton, a small town on the north coast that serves as a focal point of the Marlborough region and a ferry terminal to the North Island. The region is home to many vineyards (including Alan Scott's, who we met a few years ago in Vancouver) which we largely ignored except for trying out some of their wines with dinners throughout the trip. For us, the main attraction of the region was hiking and site-seeing the peninsulas, sounds and islands. Upon arrival, we stopped in at the local iSite (a cross between a visitor centre and travel agent) and got ourselves booked for two days of "tramping" along the Queen Charlotte Track. Tramping is the NZ translation of hiking but it seems to involve a lot more infrastructure and comfort than in North America. For example, our tramping itinerary included (1) a boat ride across the Queen Charlotte Sound to the trailhead, coincidentally crossing the path of a local pod of dolphins, (2) delivery by boat of our camping gear to our site 15 km up the trail (and gear pick-up the next morning), (3) dinner at an excellent restaurant in the "backcountry" with a gorgeous view across the Sound, (4) another ride across the Sound at the end of our second day out. It was kind of a summer version of what I imagine heli-skiing is like.

We met some interesting people along the way. We spent a day walking with Tamar, a naturopath from Brooklyn, about whose life and family we learned a great deal, and Danielle from Germany, about whom we learned that she wasn't as talkative as Tamar. I also had a nice chat with a young French kid whose English was not as good as my French so I got a little French practice. He was on a two month trip through NZ, powered entirely by foot and thumb. He had covered an impressive fraction of the North Island on foot and was just starting to do the same on the South Island. We bumped into him again in the Abel Tasman National Park (more later...) and were apparently the first ones to explain to him "blisters" which he was starting to find out about through direct experiment with his rapidly aging boots. He reminded me of younger version of another French wanderer I know. We also met a number of birds on the trail, including a Fantail who performed some impressive acrobatics for us but was too quick for me to catch fanning his tail on film and several inquisitive Weka.