The Cellar Door

Tasting at the Cellar Door

Australia has good wine, and with a week in the country, fitting in a day to taste some Aussie wine seemed a good activity. I enjoy a good full bodied red, and the Hunter Valley, an area a short way north west of Sydney and about an hour away from Regis’ cousin’s house, is renowned for its excellent reds; Shiraz, Merlots, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Shiraz is one of my favorites, and this is the grape this area really excels at, so this was a good spot to go do some Australian wine tasting. There are over 150 “Cellar Doors” (Australian for “tasting rooms”), so we had lots to choose from in Hunter Valley.

Having visited wine regions in Ontario, California, Spain and of course back home in Nova Scotia, we had some experience at how vineyards and wineries tend to take over an area,

All About The View

replacing other farms and crops, but the amount of wineries here is amazing. You can drive down section of road and find winery after winery side by side. Just the list on the Official Map and Tourist guide is slightly overwhelming . . . so many wines, so little time . . .

The up-side to so many wineries it that there is a great deal of competition, so the cellar doors offer mostly free tastings. After the $8.00 per taste fee in New Zealand this was a pleasant surprise. Some of the wineries do charge for “Superior” tastings, but the ordinary samples are free.

Cool Name, Good Wine

We left the choice of wineries up to “Cousin Wade”, our guide and designated driver, and he chose one he was particularly fond of, Audrey Wilkinson, but since he admitted that he liked this winery because of the spectacular views from the main building, I did not mind offering my method of choosing wineries with cool names, and requested visiting the “Cockfighter’s Ghost” cellar door I had seen on the way to his choice. As it happened, both were excellent, with Cockfighter’s Ghost having the most delicious Shiraz and Audrey Wilkinson having a delicious red blend I enjoyed enough to purchase a bottle for later.

Ready For The Steak!

Unfortunately, doing wine tasting when traveling far from home does not allow me to purchase much wine as my suitcase is stuffed already. I returned from Niagara-on-the-Lake with a trunk full of wine, but walked away from Hunter valley with only a bottle that will probably not survive this evening’s Aussie Barbecue.

Wineing on Waiheke

A fast ferry ride.

Our apartment here in Auckland is right on Princes Wharf on the waterfront. It is named Shed 19 after the freight shed that used to occupy the site. Out on the balcony we overlook the main ferry terminal for the city and there is a constant swarm of catamaran ferries coming and going until late at night. They seem to head out in all directions, and you cannot help but wonder where they all go.

A view from the top of the island

On the recommendation of my cousin who lives here, we took a ferry to one of the popular destinations, Waiheke Island. This island, 40 minutes away by ferry is about 90 square Kilometers and has approx. 8000 inhabitants. It is nick-named “The island of wine” for the 17 vineyards scattered around the island. That seemed a good reason to choose this island over the many scattered throughout the area.

We booked a return ferry ride on a “Fuller Fastcat”, a guided bus tour when we arrived and then an all-day pass on the local bus system. The ferry ride over was a comfortable, fast trip out the harbour past many of the sites we had visited with my cousin days before. There was a bus waiting for us and our German tour guide had lived on the island for 10 years and gave excellent friendly advice and information so that by the time we got to the farthest end of the tour we had a good idea of what we wanted to do. We hopped off the bus at a stop conveniently close to a good sample of the island’s wineries, and chose one that brewed

Doesn't taste like $200.00

beer as well as making wine.

The “Wild on Waiheke” winery is an ambitious enterprise, having not only wine and beer but also a restaurant. They also have laser skeet shooting and archery. I’m not so sure about the combination of lots of wine and beer with bows and sharp arrows, but the rowdy crowd there when we arrived seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Seriously, helicopters to a wine tasting?

After lunch, we wandered up to the next winery, but the least expensive wine was $90.00 so we decided this was a bit out of our normal range so we walked on. In the next one “Te Motu” we met a friendly Croatian sommelier, who led us in tasting a good variety of wines from $30 to $195. It was an experience to taste the $195.00, 16 year old vintage, but I found I preferred the $39.00 bottle. The final winery in the area was next door behind a high hedge, but the two large helicopters parked out front gave us a pretty good idea that this one was also out of our league, and the $8.00 tasting fee confirmed our initial opinion. That was $8.00 for each taste; not an $8.00 glass.

Then taking the excellent local bus, we got off at a wrong stop, got slightly lost, found a wonderful “track” along the coast, walked to the next town, caught the right bus, and arrived back at the ferry to head home.

On "Track" to get unlost.

Tracking the Higher Ground

A Nice "Track"

In New Zealand they speak English, but you have to be careful, because it is not always the “English” that you are used to. I think that once they got so far away from the home of “English” they decided to tweak the language to their tastes.

There are many examples of words that have taken on slightly different meanings down under. The one that I noticed was the word “track”. Down here it means trail, as in hiking or walking trail. Regis and I have been making good use of the New Zealand tracks during our explorations.

We have always enjoyed walking and hiking, and when on the cruise ships, I have often looked out from the ship and seeing a high point on the land, think, “That would be a good spot to get some pictures.” As a result, we often find ourselves searching out trails leading up to these high points of land. Here in New Zealand these trails are often called “tracks”. We have found a few of them.

Instead of purchasing the high priced Ship Approved Excursions, we often just walk off and explore on our own, and often on these self-guided tours we find these New Zealand “tracks” calling for our attention. They have proven to be very worthwhile side trips.

Our first “track” was in Hawaii, where we hiked up to the top of Diamond Head, but I already

A Great View!

told you about that, and on Hilo, (Still Hawaii) we hiked to the Akaka Falls. On Pago Pago we tried to find the trail to a National Park, but never found it. On Dravuni Island in Fiji, we hiked to the highest point on the mountain for terrific views over the whole island. In Easo Lifou, New Caledonia we found a track up to a lovely little church on a cliff overlooking the island. In Noumea, New Caledonia, while walking around the town I discovered stairs leading to a track again up to a high point giving another excellent view of the town.

Once we reached New Zealand we discovered that what we were doing was following

Climbing in "Stile"

“Tracks”, and I already told you about the great tracking we did in Port Chalmers, where we found two tracks that kept us from visiting Dunedin. Then in Akoroa after a morning exploring the town we found a track leading up a hillside occupied by “Haggis on the hoof” where we found another Noordam couple enjoying the beautiful view over the town’s harbour.

Switchback to get to the top

By this time we were really getting into this “tracking” around, and in Picton, New Zealand we headed directly to a marked track that led up a mountain to look-offs and down to Bob’s Bay, named after a man who created this track by hand many years ago. This was probably the longest track we took and led to fantastic views out over the area. Wellington had wonderful views but we took a tour and the bus took us up the ‘Tracks”, and although we had a track all mapped out in Napier, we ended up in Jail (Just a tour; don’t fret!).

It was worth the climb

By the time we reached Auckland, we were ready for some easier tracking and I was only too happy to allow my cousin and her husband to drive us up the tracks to get the views over Auckland.

However, after all our tracking over the South Pacific Islands, I think we managed to counteract the wonderful meals on the cruise ship . . . . our clothes still fit.

Chickens, Statues & Flowers

Port Chalmers

After a while, you learn not to take everything you hear as gospel, so when we were told that there was nothing much to see in Port Chalmers and we should take the shuttle into Dunedin, we considered this, but decided to explore the town first.

One nice thing about coming into small ports on an 85,000 ton ship is that you get a pretty good view of the town from the ship. Although the surrounding hills were taller than the ship’s 12 floors, there were no buildings in town to rival our height. As we docked, I could see some sort of a tall monument off to one side and an obvious look-off on a high hill behind the pier where we were docked. These two attractions were our focus as we explored the town.

The Garden

A walk up towards the monument took us past a lovely stone church and I met a friendly black & white cat who required some attention, and a gentleman from Ohio living now in New Zealand who was out walking a borrowed dog – an interesting start to our exploration. Part way up the well-marked “Track” (New Zealand for trail I believe), we found the “Lady Thorn Rhododendron Garden” in an old rock quarry; a sort of mini Butchart garden. All the plants were in full bloom and there were lovely benches and walkways through the plants.

Continuing on the track we found the monument to Capt. Scot, and a marvelous selection of poultry wandering wild around the little park surrounding the monument. Although there were no houses close by, these birds were in excellent

What are you doing here?

health and appeared to be well fed, so I suspect they were not completely “wild”.

Although this area of the world has a climate similar to our own back in Nova Scotia, just with their seasons mixed-up, the trees and plants are completely different. It is spring here now, and everything is lush and in bloom. I was very impressed with the variety and abundance of plants growing along the roads and tracks. I discovered the reason, as our walk ended back down at the harbour where I found another simple monument to a Magnus Sinclair, a local resident who promoted the beautification of the area with plantings of local flowers and plants. The local residents had obviously adopted his vision, as buildings, residences, and even industrial sites had lovely gardens and plantings decorating them. Even the container pier where we were docked had a beautiful walkway through local vegetation part way around between the fence and water. We walked in a garden, with stacks of containers on one side and the ocean on the other.

An Odd Statue

Although this walk gave us a good dose of our daily exercise we enjoyed it so much that we set off after lunch in the other direction, following the water around, and back to the look-off over the ship, discovering a delightful sculpture garden hidden away along the track.

None of these lovely local attractions or unique features of Port Chalmers were mentioned in the “Location Guide Talks”, where the town was presented as the “Gateway to Dunedin”, and we never did actually get to Dunedin. I wonder what is there?

Oh No Its Raining!

Sailing Into Doubtful Sound

After we left Milford Sound, we were back in rough seas for a while before turning into Doubtful Sound. The gentle showers in Milford turned into a downpour in Doubtful. My initial reaction was concern that this would ruin the view as we went through this attraction, but in actual fact although it made the views different, it added and improved them as well.

With the rain pouring down, I couldn’t go out on deck, but my balcony provided shelter from the rain and wind and provided a spectacular viewpoint.

Black & White

The rain turned the normal green scenery into black and white, and anything any distance away faded into the rainy haze, and the mountain tops disappeared into the clouds. My photos showed gray-green in the foreground, dark blue next, and then various shades of gray as the more distant peeks and cliff faded into the rain.

When the rain slackened off, and the ship moved closer to the edges of the Sound, the rich green of the trees clinging impossibly to almost sheer cliffs came back into view only to fade away as the rain increased again. Looking up, the tops of the peeks clung to tendrils of low clouds and disappeared in the mist.

Rain Has Decreased

The rain, instead of ruining the view, added to it.

Breakfast in the Fiord

Entering Milford Sound

I woke up when I felt a change in the rhythm of the ship, and pulling open the balcony curtains revealed jagged cliffs and tree covered mountains instead of the usual waves and whitecaps. We had arrived in New Zealand and were entering Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park. There had been some question about whether we would be able to witness this New Zealand attraction because navigating the 85,000 ton Noordam into the narrow passage is only possible in calm winds and gentle seas. It hadn’t actually been cancelled, but after crashing through 5 meter swells for two days many passengers were expressing doubts about being able to get into the fiord. The captain had obviously decided he could make it, and was sliding the ship into the fiord early this morning.

After gently slipping between cliffs and mountains we got to the end of the fiord, and the ship stopped and swung 180 degrees around to head back out. Instead of immediately starting out of the fiord, an announcement came over the PA system that we would sit here for 30 minutes to enable a passenger requiring medical attention to be transferred to shore.

Tea on the Balcony

A good time to take a breakfast break and so I went up to the Lido to battle the crowds to bring back coffee, tea and the ships delicious Dutch raisin rolls with raspberry jam. As the navigation crew skillfully held the ship in place at the end of Milford Sound, we enjoyed a breakfast on the balcony wrapped in plaid blankets surrounded by mountain scenery.

Leaving the Fiord

After we finished breakfast, the ship began the passage back out to sea, and the wind and swells had picked back up, so where we crept into the sound slowly, the ship quickly accelerated to 14 kts and we left the fiord under power, enabling the captain to better control the ship against the winds and waves. In short order we were back at sea and the ship was again rocking and rolling in southern ocean swells.