I managed to clothe myself and get my suitcase put back together (in that order too).
Breakfast was a pretty sunny affair. The table was set to show off the view. Unfortunately the view was of the rising sun, so Dad and I decided to shift the table around. Dad painstakingly picked up all the silverware and transferred it to another place. When our personable but wry waitress came to check on us and saw him moving all the silverware, she asked us why we hadn’t just rotated the table... doh! Two college educated people, one of them an engineer, and they couldn’t figure out rotating the table would be easier... Oh well, I’m sure anatomy is easier than being a waiter.
After breakfast we boarded our bus for our extremely short ride to the Rotorua “International” Airport. I use the term international loosely, since the airport is so small the runway is also the taxiway.
Tauck chartered a private jet for us to fly down to the tip of the Marlborough Sound on the South Island, and then back to Wellington. It was like stepping back in time... liquids of any size allowed on the plane, barely any security, walking out straight to the tarmac and boarding the plane from a gangway.
Also there were 68 seats for 17 people, so we could all have two windows if we wanted! Big comfy seats, real cups for the coffee and tea, homemade chocolate chip cookies... Ah yes, this is the way to travel!
Our flight to the town outside Marlborough Sound was only about 40 minutes and was perfectly smooth. We had absolutely beautiful weather for flying. Not a cloud in the sky.
Today's itinerary said to prepare for any kind of weather, sunscreen, umbrellas, coats, gloves, etc. As a result I packed three jackets of different weights onto the plane, made sure my gloves were shoved into the pocket of my Evanston fall/spring coat, and had sunscreen and an umbrella shoved in my bag.
I didn’t need anything except the sunscreen. The weather was beautiful when we landed! In the mid 50s, sunny, and quite warm in the sun. I left my heavy coat and backpack on the plane (I know right?! leaving luggage on your private plane, how cool is that?).
A very personable young man named Ryan drove us from the airport to the harbour. Ryan is 7th generation New Zealander from Marlborough Sound. His family came in 1830, and only one other family was living there!
At the harbour we met our captain for the afternoon, Ozzy (originally from Australia naturally). Renee knew everyone on the boat really well. Ryan’s mother grows beautiful flowers, of which there was a bouquet at the front of the bus. Ozzy just got back from a two week vacation, and she helped the cook, Haymish, clear plates and clean up after lunch.
I am continually amazed by how well Renee seems to know everyone we visit. It’s almost like she’s a part of their extended family, asking after relatives and grandkids, and lending a helping hand. She really is a wonderful guide.
The primary theme of our cruise around Marlborough Sound was mussels. Marlborough Sound is the only home of green-shelled (or green-lipped, depending on where you’re from) mussels in the world. New Zealand as a whole is responsible for 90% of the world’s exported mussels. There are about 650 mussel farms in the world, 550 of them are in New Zealand.
Ozzy also told us an interesting fact about the difference between a fjord and a sound. A fjord gets shallower the closer you get to the ocean, a sound gets deeper. The reason is because sounds are made of collapsed and/or flooded river valleys. As a result the river that formed the valley in the first place ran towards the sea, and carved out more of the land. The bottoms of sounds are quite shallow and flat as well, because of all the sediment washed down by the river over the years. Fjords, on the other hand, were carved by glaciers moving towards the sea, and the closer the glacier got to the warmer sea, the more of it melted, and the shallower the groove became.
We set sail into the beautiful sound. The only other boat we saw on the way out was a mussel ship, returning with about 80 tons of mussels, other than that the sound was deserted. And the water was dead flat. A beautiful day to be out on a boat!
Ozzy was quite funny, and spent a lot of time talking to Dad and me, because everyone else on the boat was distracted by the free booze. We quite enjoyed his presentation!
After about half an hour we tied up at a mussel farm. There are big floating buoys every few meters, with long bits of rope strung between them under water. We tied up right on top of one string (the boat was a catamaran). Ozzy gave us a very informative talk about mussel farming in New Zealand. Here are the highlights:
There are two kinds of mussels in Marlborough Sound, the desirable green-lipped mussels and the blue mussels, which are undesirable and are thrown away. Blue mussels live everywhere on the planet and thus cannot be exported for profit. Green-lipped mussels have very distinctive green markings on their shell, and they are long! Almost as long as my hand. The mussels take between two and two and a half years to mature. Wild mussels are ‘caught’ on ropes further into the Sound and brought back to the farms to grow and be harvested. There is no difference in taste between male and female mussels after you cook them, but raw the females are pinker and sweeter, the males are whiter and creamier (insert dirty joke here).
After that, Haymish came out with a big bowl of freshly cooked green-lipped mussels and showed us how to eat them. I ate one. It will be my mussel for this decade. But it was the best tasting mussel I’ve ever hated.
After the mussels had been devoured we got to have a buffet lunch of potatoes, two types of salad, a delicious baked ham, and locally caught salmon Ryan had cooked on a nifty teflon sheet on top of the grill. It was really tasty! The ham especially was wonderful. Apparently Haymish has a secret recipe involving at least 11 herbs and spices (and a healthy amount of brown sugar and butter, I’m sure).
We had all been given two small mussel shells to ‘trade’ for drinks on the ship. I had a glass of sauvignon blanc, dad tried a chardonnay and a local wine made from an Italian grape, which was very different than anything else we’ve had on this trip.
After we were all fed, relaxed, and happy, we headed back towards the marina. It was an incredibly pleasant afternoon!
We hopped back on board our private jet (the bus drove right onto the tarmac and dropped us off). The ride to Wellington was really short. We took off at 3:13 and landed at 3:27. Basically we just hopped between the South and North Island. The straight looked really choppy, even from the air, so I was just as glad we were gliding above it.
We landed and were bussed to our hotel, the Copthorne Hotel. Our view is of a small marina full of sailboats and is quite lovely. I’m ditching Dad tomorrow afternoon and evening to hang out with Laura and see her flat and university, so he went out for a walk (while I wrote this and tied up the internet) looking for a place to go for dinner tomorrow.
Tonight we’re taking advantage of our Tauck-included dinner at the hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment