Day 17: Wine Tasting and Hamner Springs

Today was a late start for our group.  I woke up around 10 am ish to find our entire group dressed, packed and ready to go.  Opps.  Guess if everyone was in a huge hurry, someone would have woken me up.  Instead, I got to sleep in for the first time in two weeks! Thank you to everyone in our group as I believe they decided to let me have a late morning. 

Once we got on the road, we headed to a small Christchurch park to take a look around.  We were hoping to at least get a little bit of an idea of what a spectacular Christchurch garden would look like.  The park was very green, crawling with children, had a pond with people sailing miniature sail boats and nice walking paths.  We came across a swing bridge that we believe was closed due to damage from the September 4th, 2010 earthquake.  The park was covered with weeping willows and an abundance of floating wildlife (aka ducks).

We didn't spend more than an hour at the park as we were all quite anxious to start our wine tasting.  Wine tasting is a rather precarious activity for me.  First of all, I'm a ridiculous light-weight.  Doesn't take much to get me to my happy place and we had several places on our to-do list.  Our first stop was Pegasus Bay.  We were told about our various choices that would best suit our tastes in wine.  Everyone in our group prefers red wine.  I, on the other hand, can not drink reds as they tend to give me migraine headaches and to be quite honest with you, I'm just not that sophisticated either.  I have a sweet tooth and only a white wine really does it for me.  So, as we went through the wines, our little group would offer me the white wines in their selections that they were tasting.  I had arrived at my happy place at our first vineyard. Scary.

We were at the Mud House around lunch time and after perusing their menu, decided we needed to throw something in our stomachs to absorb some of the alcohol.  We sat down to dine on a picturesque outdoor patio looking out to the vineyards.  One of the locals had his helicopter parked next to the patio where we were seated. (Wow.) 

Our waiter stopped by our table to present the lunch specials and offered us a "porn salad."  I suppressed a giggle, looked at Angela and then asked our waiter to please explain exactly what a "pron" is and was it something he thought I might enjoy!  It didn't take more than a moment to realize that a "porn" is a "prawn."  I was almost disappointed and decided to move on to another very interesting dish.  I ordered this delicious, yet rather strange culinary delight.  Basically, they took hash browns covered with a tomato relish, then piled on rocket (kind of like arugula), smoked salmon, capers, avocado and lightly drizzled the whole thing in aoili.  I'm just surprised that they didn't have "streaky bacon" on there too.  These people seem to put "streaky bacon" on many of their menu offerings.  Interesting. Very interesting.

Overlooking Hamner Springs

Following lunch and a couple of other vineyard stops, we headed inland a bit to make our way toward Hamner Springs.  Hamner Springs is a quaint, vacation spot that attracts tourists mainly for it's thermal springs.  As soon as we were checked in to our motel, we put on swimsuits and headed out to the thermal springs.  The springs offered several different soaking pools.  Our favorite was a "message" pool with jets located in all the right places.  We had seen a variety of different people hanging on to the railing in that pool facing the wall as opposed to having their backs to the wall.  Once we got in, we understood the reason for the "turn around." 

The really cool feature at the thermal springs was the toilet bowl.  Yep ... these guys had a huge water slide that spit you through a "toilet bowl" and then out towards the bottom.   Fun, fun, fun.  After a few flushes for each of us, we took turns racing down the other two waters slides that were offered.  It didn't take more than one go to figure out which one was the fastest and therefore, most entertaining.

Following the thermal springs, we headed out for a late dinner and then off to rest for our adventures to come. 

I would like to take a moment to point out that I didn't describe a hike for today.  We actually took the day off, believe it or not!  Today was all about rest and relaxation.  I would say it might have even resembled a traditional "vacation" day!

One other thing to point out ... the accents on the South Island are pretty severe.  Our waiter at lunch was not the first time we stared at a Kiwi and wondered if he/she was actually speaking English or how to handle the awkward stare that accompanies that moment of incomprehension! 

When we were in Christchurch, Rae, our host told us to just leave the key in the "litter box" when we left.  The "litter box?"  Really!?!  Gross.  She had to explain that it was the box that you put you litters in ... you know, your MAIL!!!  Oh lord!  They pronounce their "e"s as "i"s ... so a peg is a pig.  My mother-in-law isn't Peggy ... she's Piggy.  Oh, that just sent us in gales of laughter.  And she smiled (maybe) when I told her how to say her name in NZ!