Moenui Bay & Picton with Grandpa Doug

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MOENUI BAY & PICTON WITH GRANDPA DOUG

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8th - 11th March 2019

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We arrived in Picton from Kaikoura off of the Kiwi Bus, highly anticipating or next adventure and got picked up by Grandpa Doug and Vicki. We were taken straight to a beautiful vineyard to do wine tasting (our dream) and also ended up having such a delicious meal. Our favourite dish was of course the blueberry tart with icecream, yummm! As we’re in the Marlborough Region, it would have been rude not to have tried the wine!

Never have we ever felt so excited to have a room with just the two of us. And not just the two of us, but a single bed each, a toilet, a washing machine AND a fridge!!!! Needless to say we were in heaven. So much that the first thing we did was we emptied our bags all over the floor, as you can see in the photo below, haha!

We also had an abundence of food which made up for our lack of nutricious backpacker meals that we’d been having for the past month!

And lots of wine, particularly a family number that caught our eye...

On the morning of the 9th we took it upon ourselves to see just how bad we were at paddleboarding, however, discovered that we were actually pretty great as neither of us fell off. Although the weather was overcast and raining, there was a beautiful mist over the sound that we paddled in. Considering the Malborough Region is supposed to be the sunniest place in the country, we caught it at its time of showers (although it was so dry it definitely needed it).

Grandpa Doug also took us out on his boat which he let us drive, it was awesome! Queue an ugly photo:

It was the first day in a while that we were actually able to relax without having to constantly move around and we loved every moment of it.

The following day we got a ferry from Picton and went to Lochmara, situated about 10 minutes along the sound. It was such a cute quaint place where we fed stingray and went to an observatory in an old boat so we could observe the marine life below the surface.

Afterwards we then decided to walk around the area and went kayaking for a little while, making the most of the weather before the clouds began to close in.

And to tick it off the New Zealand bucket list we also saw a famous Weta, finally!!

We had such a wonderful time staying in beautiful Moenui Bay in Polours Sound, surrounded by stunning scenery and lovely people. In a way it was hard to comprehend that some people actually have this beautiful landscape on their doorstep. Thank you again to Grandpa Doug and Vicki for letting us stay as we had a truly wonderful time. We will have to start arranging our next trip back!

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- A