Scenic Drive to Picton

Robin Hood Bay

Sunshine! We agreed to get going early and drive the scenic coastal route up to Picton via Port Underwood (Whites Bay, Robin Hood Bay, and Oyster Bay). Picton is the small town in the northeast corner of the South Island near the head of the Queen Charlotte Sound and where we’ll take the ferry across the Cook Strait when we visit the North Island.

Mick took us up to Whites Bay on our first day and though jetlagged, we were impressed with the awesome views from pullouts along the very drivable dirt and gravel road.

The Port Underwood route was packed with stunning views of turquoise waters, but there was also quite a bit of logging scarring the hillsides. It was quite windy and we had just a few sprinkles, too. There is a lot of local history in this area, which was first settled by Maori and then Europeans, notably whalers.

At Whites Bay we saw the building where the first undersea telegraph cable crossing Cooks Straight from Lyall Bay in Wellington (North Island) was connected in 1866. We made several other stops along the road to take in the views and take pictures.









Click here for larger versions and captions of the above photos.

We enjoyed an excellent lunch at Le Cafe in Picton, after walking around town a bit and getting some information from a helpful clerk with an Austrian-kiwi accent at the i-SITE. The Picton area is also where we'll do some hiking on the Queen Charlotte Track. We left Picton and drove back on Hwy 1, taking less than 30 minutes to get back to Blenheim.

On the way home, we stopped at the home of our home-exchangers' daughter, Haley and her family. Like all the kiwis we have met, they were very friendly. John was working in the vineyard when we arrived so we stopped and chatted briefly from the car. We asked him about the fenced elk we’d been seeing here and there and he told us they were actually red deer. We found out that the red deer is the largest deer species and about one third smaller than our elk. John said they have elk here, and we were surprised to find they also call them wapiti!

John and Haley own and work 12 hectares of vineyards and they grow Reisling, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir grapes. We chatted with Haley, Lindsay and Galen and had yummy kumara muffins and tea, and got some ideas about things to see and do. Haley said she’d be our Marlborough wine tour guide, an offer that will be very hard to refuse! On the way out we met their pig, Charlotte, and sheep.

Here's a map of the route we drove.


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