We were in Picton on January 23, 2025.

We went to breakfast and saw and heard the announcements about bio security for both New Zealand and Australia.  We hear or see reminders 10 times a day. Good for them for protecting their home lands but we’ve tuned them out by now.  

We intended to walk around the promenade deck, but found it blocked on both the port and starboard sides.

 

We gave up and I went to the crows nest and got a mocha and chocolate croissant.

We came out onto a deck at the bow and looked out at Marlborough Sound.

 

Once again, we are docked where they are storing timber for loading. We have seen this so many times that I’m surprised there are any trees left in New Zealand!  Most of the timber goes to China and the primary species exported is Radiata pine.

 

A crew safety drill began as we were preparing to leave on our shore excursion. 

Our activity today was to ride the Marlborough Flyer. It is a heritage train powered by a 1950s locomotive. 

 

We passed through vineyards, some planted in the 1870s. 

The Marlborough area produces 80 percent of New Zealand wines across 150 wineries.  They are mostly Sauvignon Blanc.

We had free samples of a local white but had to pay for our glasses of red. We purchased a cheese board to snack on.

This train transported two future Kings of England, the prince of Wales in 1920 the Duke and Duchess of York in 1927.  Looking forward, we didn’t see William, Prince of Wales or Prince George.

Our ride was about two hours before we stopped in Blenheim and took advantage of the opportunity to get another New Zealand meat pie. We chose steak, cheese and bacon.

It is similar to an empanada in our world, but seems to be baked not fried.

We saw this memorial on the hill. Blenheim’s 16-metre-high clock tower was completed in 1928.  It is the Marlborough region’s principal memorial to locals who died in World War I.

The train cars were made between 1911 and 1914. The engine was made in Canada.

On this journey we went up and down one of the steepest gradients in the New Zealand at one and 37. It goes up one foot over 37 feet.

It didn’t seem steep compared to the trains we’ve been on in Colorado.  In fact, we missed noticing it at all on the way up so tried to pay attention going down.

We were above sea level and heard the braking but did not have a sense of steep incline. 

We crossed through the wetlands, home of an abundance of birds, game, fish, and unique vegetation. 

The wetlands are being restored to the benefit of the bar-tailed godwit.  This bird has the longest migration in the world from summers in Alaska to winters in New Zealand.

A male bar-tailed godwit was tracked while completing the 7500 mile journey.  He flew non stop for 11 days reaching a speed of 55 mph!

So many sheep!

So many vineyards! 

There is our ship, hiding behind the logs!

We went for drinks and, once again, no Bailey’s so no chocolate martinis.  The beverage team is out of Bailey’s ship wide. I tried to ask if they usually have Bailey’s or if it just isn’t standard practice to stock it in the South Pacific.The answer was that it is usually available and the bar waiter didn’t know why they were out. 

White Russians today!

Usually, the process of transferring a pilot between the pilot boat and the ship is relatively straightforward. We’ve seen it take just moments many times. We watched for several minutes as this transfer was made quite difficult because of wave action. It was eventually accomplished.

After dinner we wandered into the gift shop aboard the ship.  Randy jokingly asked if they had any Baileys.  The clerk said “the ship” had just come and bought the last eight bottles from their stock!  Some people are having chocolate martinis tonight!

Next Up: Jet Boating!