Julie's Magical Mystery Tour: Tranzscenic Train Journey, Christchurch to Picton via Kaikoura, including Blenheim

I took a fantastic Tranzscenic train trip up the coastline from Christchurch to Kaikoura. It's a beautiful ride, around and through mountains, with marvelous views of the ocean. Once again, the weather was rather changeable (not so different from early Spring in the Northeastern U.S., actually), so upon arriving and getting settled in, I decided to join a couple taking a van shuttle service to the Kaikoura winery, overlooking the ocean. We had a nice little tour and delicious wine tastings of several different types. It was actually not their own wine grown there, as they're a very new winery, so they didn't yet have a suitable crop for wine making (I guess you have to wait a year or two). After that, our driver took us to the seal colony (saw a few fur seals crashed out on the beach, and some on the nearby rocks), and also to an old house built on a whalebone foundation. Apparently only three exist in the world, one of them on the U.S. West Coast.

Besides the winery, seals, and whalebone house, I also recall wandering into this odd little whaling museum that was quite interesting, with a lot of historical material about Kaikoura, all sorts of whalebones, and a detailed history of whaling in the region.

I had a vague idea of staying longer than planned, and taking a bus up to Picton rather than the train. It had been rather windy and rainy, and all the whale and dolphin watching/swimming with trips had been cancelled that day. I thought I might try the next day, and signed up for a dolphin-watching trip, with a standby for the swimming part. I would leave it up to fate. Tuesday dawned. Fate had decided that no one was going to watch or swim with anything, and morning trips were once again cancelled. No matter. I definitely plan on visiting Kaikoura again, so -- next time.

So I went ahead with my plans and took the rest of the (wonderful) transcoastal train route up to Picton. I got checked in and settled, then off on a quest to find the Cloudy Bay winery in Blenheim. For those of you who aren't wine enthusiasts, Cloudy Bay is a highly respected New Zealand winery; several people recommended it to me. I had half a mind to hire a car and drive there, but a woman at the Picton information office said the rental company would charge me a full day's price for half a day, asked me where I wanted to go, then called a friend of hers with a "passenger service."

This turned out to be a great idea. The driver was an older woman who used to travel around on a Harley with her husband, so I got an interesting story about them and a good deal of Kiwi history. She got me to the famous Cloudy Bay, and I had delicious tastes of several of their wines, coming away with a bottle of Pinot Noir and a marvelous bubbly thing called Pelorus (both of which I was told are unavailable in the U.S.). She also took me to this lookout area that had great views of Picton and the surrounding area.

After she dropped me off (still afternoon, and turning out to be a beautiful, sunny day), I took a long walk around the harbour and marina. I'm not sure what I had expected of Picton. I knew it was the "ferry town" where the Intercoastal to Wellington came in and went out, so I suppose thinking in U.S. terms, I maybe figured the town would be nothing much, and perhaps a bit 'seedy.' But Picton is a gorgeous Oceanside town with amazing views of the Marlborough Sounds. I spent a good deal of time enjoying the water and boats, the birds washing and sunning themselves, and did a nice bit of shell collecting at a small rocky beach near the marina that was crammed full of fascinating specimens. The sunset was magnificent, of course, in such a location, and once again, for the several hundredth time, I felt extremely fortunate to be in New Zealand.

As the sun went down, I was getting hungry, so I wandered around the few streets that made up the town center, trying to decide on a place to eat. I was standing outside one such place, studying their menu, and noticed a man next to me doing the same. We struck up a conversation, and the next thing I know, in typical Kiwi fashion, we were having dinner together.

Tranzscenic train ride to Kaikoura