Posted by: Jonathan
Braving the icy cold waters of the Cook Straight (between North and South Island), The Peacock Fighter gently rocked deep in the hull of the Interislander ferry.
Braving the icy cold waters of the Cook Straight (between North and South Island), The Peacock Fighter gently rocked deep in the hull of the Interislander ferry.
On arrival in Picton we planned to drive to Kaikora for a whale watching tour, that is until the girls heard you could swim with pods of wild dolphins in Picton. Enough said, we booked a tour for the following morning. We spent our free afternoon in New Zealand's wine capital, Blenheim, home to over 50 wineries. We visited a few of them learning about the different types of local wines and of course tasting them.
We overnighted in Picton in a multi-level family room before waking up early to take a dip with flipper and friends.
Picton sits deep in the Marlborough Sound which is home to four different types of dolphins. The Bottlenose, Dusky, Common, and Hector Dolphin, the last of which is only found in New Zealand and is the smallest dolphin in the world. In addition to these the Killer Whale (also in the dolphin family) makes a rare appearance in the sound and was sighted the day before our tour but luckily not during our tour since they are at the top of the food chain and would have kept us from diving in.
Our tour began with wrestling our way into 8mm wetsuits, booties gloves, and hoods before boarding the boat.
Our tour began with wrestling our way into 8mm wetsuits, booties gloves, and hoods before boarding the boat.
We patrolled bay after bay for over an hour without seeing anything more exciting than a couple of birds. But that all changed toward the mouth of the sound. A large pod, broken into several groups, were jumping, splashing, and feeding in the clear water. We drove among the dolphins for some time before jumping into the freezing cold water to swim with them.
The dolphins were genuinely interested in us when we got in the water. They circled us multiple times greeting us with whistling and chirping. We were able to swim with three different groups of dolphins, the first of which included a fur seal who was as curious as could be. Without Bianca 2.0 we aren't able to share the underwater experience with you but you can imagine how fun it would be to frolic with flipper and family.
Out of the wetsuits and in warm clothes, we drove along a road barely reaching 30 km/hr due to the twisting curves and commanding views.
The scenery continued to astound us as the ocean gave way to snow capped peaks and crystal clear creeks. The amazing thing about NZ is the scenery can change drastically in just a couple hours and if you keep driving, it will change again.
That night we had pizzas in a local bar while we watched The All Blacks (NZ's Rugby Team) send the Argentinians packing in the quarterfinal of the Rugby World Cup. We were lucky enough to have a few patient patrons around us willing to answer all of our beginner rugby questions.
We started the next day with a hike to a fur seal colony. Along the way we saw a pod of the small rare hector dolphin.
The day continued as The Peacock Fighter navigated curvy roads, beaches, bridges, and snow capped mountains.
An interesting stop along the way was pancake rocks. Still somewhat a mystery as to how they were formed but no mystery as to how they got their name.
We ended the day with a hike to the face of Franz Joseph Glacier. The ice cascaded its way down the narrow canyon with a gaping mouth at the bottom spewing fresh glacier melt.
A storm blew in from the ocean later that evening and it pattered on the roof all night and the entire next day, which we spent lounging in front of the T.V. The four of us cooked dinner that night in our room, steak and potatoes... delicious!
Seeing how this area gets up to 18 feet of rain a year, we thought better of spending a second day of the vacation indoors waiting for the rain to stop and braved the elements. The one advantage of the two day torrential downpour was the plethora of waterfalls. The mountains were like water balloons with hundreds of pin pricks spouting water in every direction.
As we cruised down from the last mountain pass of the day, the rain stopped and clouds thinned rewarding us with spectacular views.
That night we began slowly acclimating Jenn for her return to Texas by heading to Los Amigos for some tasty Tex-Mex.
We woke up in our comfy hotel room to blue skies and pancakes.
Taking advantage of the sunny weather, we hiked up to the soak up the 360 degree view of Iron Mountain before driving toward the Southern Fiordlands.
Along the drive we passed countless clear lakes and soaring snowy peaks.
Even though the peacock fighter was designed primarily to...well fight peacocks of course, he still handles like a dream on the winding roads as we continue south towards the Fiordlands.