adventurethroughtravel: April 8th Wellington to Nelson

Wellington is aptly named the “Windy Wellington” since it was blustery the whole time we were there! When we showed up at the Interislander Dock there were seven other bikes waiting to board. One biking couple had a man on a Boulevard and his wife on a Honda CB1300. They were both large people and had just gotten married the previous weekend. She has always been into bikes and was a “tracker” – a racer. When she met him, she asked if he rode a bike and when he said “no”, she said “well you’d better buy a bike if this is going to work!”

The three hour ride on the ferry was great. There was an elderly woman who had lunch with us who is from New Zealand and had been in Newfoundland and traveled across Canada with three girlfriends in the sixties. We arrived in Picton at the head of Queen Charlotte sound after a three hour ferry ride.

After leaving Picton, we were very quickly in wine country, passing over 20 wineries in the space of 10 minutes, including ones I recognized like Nautilus, Cloudy Bay, Forest Estate and Matua Marlborough. The scope of New Zealand’s wine industry is truly amazing, with 530 licensed wineries and 873 registered grape growers. Since 1996 the amount of land used for growing grapes has tripled. Gisborne specializes in Chardonnay, Hawke’s Bay is best known for its’ Cabernet Sauvignons while Marlborough is the home of Sauvignon Blanc. Talking to people, Pinot Noir appears to be the next major success.

We stopped at Havelock, the green lipped mussel capital of the world. I had visited the Sanford plant and their grow-out sites in 2003 when I went to the America’s Cup. Havelock has a huge marina for a village of only 500 people. From there it is only 75 kilometers to Nelson with a nice section of twisties when climbing over the Richmond Range. Nelson is a city of about 45,000 people with a major fishing industry, as well as a major jumping off point to three of the most popular nation parks (Kahurangi, Nelson Lakes and Abel Tasman). It is one of the sunniest areas in New Zealand and although it was cloudy all day, when we neared Nelson the sun came out! Due to our early arrival we washed the bikes and made it to the gym.