Thursday November 10 ,2011
No great sunrises today, but still very satisfying. Took off for Westport today after eating apple/cinnamon pie & a wild boar meat pie for brekki. Our stay at the Chalets was great.
We passed thru lots of small towns, one was Motueka where we bought a bag of roadside kiwis (about 30) by honor system for $1.25. Decided to take a side trip to Lake Rototiki, an Alpine lake in the Nelson Lakes National Park. We took the Bellbird Loop tramp listening to many different kinds of birds, ate our lunch, a mince, bacon, tomato pie at the lake. Saw thousands of sheep & their new born lambs. Had a blast beeping the car horn & watching lambs run every which way. Went thru Murchison & drove down the Buller River gorge-magnificent. Reminded Vic of his motorcycle trip thru Montana. While driving alongside the river we saw a Jetboat powering its way up the river. It was full of screaming satisfied/hyped up customers. The boat pilot saw me snapping pics & came straight towards me & executed some very nifty sharp, spray induced turns. It looked like great fun. We are planning to go jet boating at Lake Wanaka. We walked across the longest swing bridge in NZ & I took the zip line back across the Buller River-about 160 meters. While tramping thru the woods we saw a weka, very much like a kiwi, wingless, brown & furtive. We drove onto Westport to our motel, the Westport Spa. Very nice. We walked to dinner to The Townhouse. It was written up in Frommers as the best restaurant on the West Coast & it did not disappoint. Our waiter/sommelier Pete helped us match wines(with several nice size samples) with our dinner choices. Our food choices-fresh scallops, Chawanmushi whitebait custard, fried whitebait, monk fish w/green lipped mussels & salt & pepper calamari. We paired these choices w/'10 Stanley Estates Marlborough Pinot Gris Atawere Valley; '11 Bladen Sauv. Blanc; '10 Blackridge Old Vine Gewürztraminer; '10 Johanneshof Gewürztraminer. For dessert we had creme caramel/fried banana/coconut ice cream & brandied dry fruit orange chocolate truffle. We paired these with a NV Wishart Hawkes Bay Camaraderie dessert merlot and a '10 Ata Ranch Martinsborough Kahn Botrytis Riesling. BTW whitebait is a juvenile fish that the Kiwis net on rivers/streams in the spring. They are very small, about 1/4" by 1". They normally make them into fritters, but we got to try them in their purest form. Tomorrow we start off early for a day filled with more seals, pancakes of sorts & one of the ten greatest train rides in the world. Oh, I almost forgot, the bug poo tree is for real, but the sweet nectar (not!) is called Honey dew (sic).
No comments:
Post a Comment