Last week I was on a school trip to the North Western region of the South Island to experience the vineyards and wineries in that area as part of my studies. The approach there is really different. While in Marlborough the vineyards and wineries are very big and a lot are owned by huge foreign companies, in the Nelson region most are still family-owned. Therefore, the approaches are very individual and we have seen a lot of different philosophies about growing grapes and making wines. Of course the biggest part of the trip consisted of tasting wines – and while we got to taste wines at the wineries, we did a lot of wine tasting ourselves in the evening in the backpackers in Motueka where we stayed. And even for serious wine students tasting wine can get boring, so we changed to beer for one evening. One of the classmates organised a 25 litres keg, but it was not enough and we finally drank wine as well (can’t remember a lot of that night, only that I slept for about two hours at the most). Motueka is a nice little town close to the beach – a few of us even managed to get away one afternoon to enjoy Kaiteriteri and surroundings. It was a lovely, sunny afternoon and we walked along the beach and collected sea shells – it was like holiday! It was a shame however that I couldn’t get away from the school group very much apart from that to explore a bit more of the scenery and integrate with the locals. After the classmates left for Blenheim I decided to stay in Nelson and spent two nice, quiet days there. What did I do in this nice town that I often refer to as ‘little Wellington’: hanging around, watching movies, visiting galleries, eating and drinking etc. Just the things you normally do on a small city trip.
Back in Blenheim it is time to write a few reports, two of which are very important but very difficult as well. Not really looking forward to the upcoming busy weeks, but heya that’s life of a student. You can’t have fun every day! (although it should be possible).
And of course I also have to work in the library again.
So, that’s it for now – two weeks and then I am spending one very long week in Wellington!
Cheers,
Anita
1 comment:
Ha Anita!
Dat klinkt goed! Wij zijn terug uit Canada, waar we ook verre familie hebben bezocht in de Okanagan Valley. Dat is het wijngebied van Canada. Had er zelf nog nooit van gehoord, maar ik werd blij verrast! We hebben daar hele goede wijn geproeft, waar menig franse wijn bij verbleekt. De grootste en bekendse is het Estate Mission Hill. Als wijnmevrouw moet je daar eigenlijk gewoon eens gaan kijken... Heb nog wel een logeeradres voor je...
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