The Trans Coastal Train

Time for another train ride, this time from Christchurch at 7AM up to Blenheim, a 4 plus hour ride. These two train rides are the only passenger trains in NZ. They are not the Japanese bullet trains but are reasonably comfortable with reserved seats and a table between each four seats. The cool thing is they have a live announcer on each train who points out the sights and gives a little history of NZ sprinkled with some satire. The "voice" is also the same person who works the bar car, comes through to pick up garbage and helps load the luggage car at each stop so cross training is big in NZ.

We were met at the depot in Blenheim which is a small town in the heart of wine and mussel country. It looks like a farm trade center but it is also clear the wine boom in the area has brought new construction. Our lodging is known as Mason Grange and has only two guest rooms and an apartment. It is located in a 10 acre pinot noir vineyard and is straight out of Architectural Digest: just incredibly well designed and decorated.
John and Robin are the owner/hosts and are among the most gracious hosts we have encountered anywhere. It is a most unique setting with vineyard serving as a backyard and mountains as a backdrop.

We transferred from the depot directly to a cruise of Marlborough sound for the green "shell" mussel tour. You can see in the photos the floats which hold the "ropes" dangling in the water on which the greenshell mussels attach and grow until the harvester comes along and takes them to their destiny. A "farm" consists of 3.5 acres of these floats and there are 600 farms in the area so it is quite an industry. You see the final product presented on board which had just come from the harvester we were watching. Combine with a glass of local wine and you have a transformational experience.

The next morning we met Sue the proprietor of Marlborough Travel and she escorted us to several vineyards for the day for wine tasting and finished with a stop at a most original air museum which is dedicated to the WWI origins of aerial warfare. My favorite was an old film of a German standing in the aft cockpit of a biplane and reaching down to grasp a 10 pound bomb which he then dropped overboard much like one would drop a water balloon out of a hotel window!

A couple of pictures from the day:



Tomorrow it is a two hop flight from Blenheim to Rotorua with a 2 hour layover in Wellington, capital of NZ. See you there.