Wild on Waiheke

by Adam & Lara on 04/02/10

Happy Passover/Easter, etc.  For all of you complainers, we'd like to stress that we already apologized for the sporadic barfing (or chundering as they call it here) of blog posts.  Interwebs here is totes sucky.  But we just arrived in Wellington, a city at the southern tip of the North Island that is on some World maps, so we can finally share more stories.

Before we left SF, some of our friends (namely Sam, Molly, Erin, Aimee and Olga) got us a generous gift voucher to the Cable Bay Vineyard in NZ.  As friends we were flattered, but as alcoholics we were launched into a drooling, bloodthirsty hysteria.  So after our campy adventures up North we decided to treat ourselves to some fine dining and drinking.

The winery was located on Waiheke Island about 10km off the coast of Auckland.

Steema's first ferry ride!  Being pennywise travelers, we opted for the cargo ferry because it was cheaper than the cushy passenger ferries.  So we had the pleasure of chillin next to a garbage truck.

We didn't have to use the Muster Station, but good thing we knew where it was should we have needed... muster... ing.

When we got to the island we had to find our way to the vineyard.  The nice fella that owned our B&B gave us walking directions.  Unfortunately "Kiwi directions" (as we have started calling them) are always lacking several important details, often replaced with wildly innacurate hand gestures and salutated with the phrase "ya can't miss it."  We missed it.

This was about 30 minutes into our hike, in the middle of a forest/swamp, before we realized that the path we were on was the wrong one.  25 minutes after this picture we ended up in the same spot we started, which was in a field next to a pile of poop.  We didn't take a picture of that.

Boom there it is, mofos.

And she's happy again.  Didn't even have to get her drunk.

 Following our 6-wine tasting, we each got a glass and a fancy-schmancy appetizer and sat out in their sculpture park.

Not too shabby.  That's Auckland off in the horizon to the right.

Not sure what those sculptures are supposed to be, but Lara assured me they were classy and awesome.

2 glasses of wine and 1 duck foie gras later the restaurant opened up.  We were the first ones in, and therefore got prime real estate.

This pic will probably be appearing in the 2011 Cable Bay Vineyard brochure.

Between courses we took a shot outside in front of the sunset.  As beautiful people, we've pretty much mastered the take-a-picture-of-ourselves move.

Campervan livin' at it's best: rack of lamb and beef ribeye, supplemented by garlic mashed potatoes, broccolini and braised greens and fried potato wedges with aioli.

Having been a good boy, Adam got pie for dessert.

Thanks again to Sam, Molly, Erin, Aimee and especially Olga.  Without you we would have had to begrudgingly pay for our gluttony with money and our health, instead of just our health.

Full pics from this trip can be found here.