Kiwis are such nice people
Except for the weather, which was quite windy and a little rainy, yesterday was an all around great day. We stayed in the small town of Renwick, which is in New Zealand’s famous Marlbourough valley, the heart of NZ’s wine production. There are 105 vineyards in the Marlbourough area, and a good portion of them are within short biking distance of Renwick. The place we stayed at was kind enough to rent us bikes for $10 apiece; we’d checked elsewhere and the cheapest we’d found for the whole day was $50 per person–way too expensive.
Before we left to bike around and taste wine, we brought the car to the panel beaters (which is what Kiwis call auto body shops) to get an estimate on what it would cost to fix it. I’d taken the car to a place in Wellington before our ferry left and he quoted me $450–a damn fortune. We explained the situation to these guys and they went right to work, buffing out most of the mark and painting over the small area that couldn’t be buffed out. It isn’t perfect, but I bet that’s all the rental shop would have done, after charging us the full repainting price. I asked the guy what we owed him before we left and he said “no worries. Now you can tell people how nice Kiwis are.” Kiwis are very, very nice. As long as everything passes muster with the rental car people, we got the car fixed for free.
Touring the wineries was great as well. We visited about 10 over the course of the day, trying all their different varities and ending up feeling pretty good and biking a little wobbly by the end of the day. We bought a couple of bottles, nothing too expensive. We were looking (of course) for something inexpensive and good tasting. We tried many that were one or the other, but only a few that were both. I could go into depth about what kinds of wine are made here and how they differed from vineyard to vineyard, but I’m getting bored just thinking about writing it, so I won’t put you through anything like that.
Today, we drove and drove, about 2/3 of the way down the south island so we can go to a Rugby game tomorrow night in Dunedin, which is at the south of the south island. We stopped at a place that is famous for being a nesting site for a couple of different kinds of penguins. One, the yellow eyed penguin, is rare, and we saw a few of them. It was strange seeing penguins on a plain sand beach–my mind, at least, associates them with snow. I got a couple of halfway decent photos, and we might go out tomorrow morning to see if we can see them a little closer.
Tags: Dunedin, New Zealand, Travel, wine country
awrichner
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