October 4-6
We landed in New Zealand, our last new country on this trip. It makes us a bit sad that it’s almost over, but we’re also super excited for this country and excited to be heading home in a few weeks.
We flew into Auckland, on the North Island, and rented a car. We’re going to drive around the country for the next two weeks. We had just one night in Auckland before heading out to see what we could see in this country.
We liked Auckland a lot. It reminded us a bit of Seattle or Toronto with a beautiful waterfront and some great restaurants. We have heard nonstop from people in the North Island of their strong distaste for Auckland, but what we saw was delightful.
The next morning we boarded a ferry and rode out to Waiheke island.
This beautiful, small island is about an hour boat ride from Auckland and is home to a bunch of wineries. We visited 8 wineries while on the island: Tantalus, Te Motu, Stony Ridge, Passage Rock, Poderi Crisci, Jurassic Ridge, Mudbrick, and Man O War.
Tantalus was our first stop and one of our favorites.
That’s a light fixture made out of old vines. How cool is that?
It was also delightful because it housed Alibi Brewing as well.
Jurassic Ridge was also one of our favorites. The wine maker was doing the tastings. At first he was super pompous and snooty about how his wines are made and the organic process. But by the end he had warmed up to us a bit and we ended up having some good conversation with him about wine – and lees aging. Most important his wines were delicious.
Those rocks are old – from the Jurassic period or something. They found them on the property which is why the winery is named Jurassic Ridge.
Poderi Crisci was great because they had delicious food and Italian wines.
All in all we had a wonderful two days there, including great pizza on the beach for dinner one night.
All of the wineries were incredibly picturesque. We could have hung around for a week. But we have other things to see!
With New Zealand being as beautiful as it is expect more pictures than text for the next few posts. Although I’m not sure there is a single picture that we’ve taken since our arrival here that is as beautiful as real life.
Maybe this one. This is a really great photo.