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Wildlife, Water Wonders & Wine Tasting in the Alpine Triangle

We hadn’t planned our trip so we decided that our first point of call should be the Alpine Triangle: Hammer Springs, Kaikoura and Waipura……  Our first destination was the alpine village of Hammer Springs, about 3hrs north of Christchurch, and is famous for the thermal hot springs! We thought we better “earn” our hot thermal spring experience so we put on our “tramping” (walking) gear and set off on our first NZ tramp! We walked up to a gorgeous waterfall, which was a pretty much continuous trek uphill for about 90 minute until we were rewarded with stunning views of the waterfall.

After our walk we had our first NZ picnic and then went to the thermal springs, which had a few outdoor swimming pools and 9  thermal springs (ranging from 37 to 41 degrees), all with varying minerals to add to the therapeutic effect! After a few hours we were suitably relaxed!!

 Next stop was the absolutely beautiful coastal town of Kaikoura, which is well known for its natural marine life.

A must-do in Kaikoura is the “Peninsular Coastal Walk”, a 3-4 hour walk that took us past stunning coastal scenery, turquoise sea along the rugged coastline, past a seal colony, through forests and high up beautiful hills where the view is breathtaking. However, us being us we thought we would run a bit of it, which actually turned out a good idea as the mixture of hill walking and coastal running made the day really special, and is now one of Debbie’s  highlights (we also got a nice tan from our afternoon in the sun, so always a bonus!)

Watching the seals in their natural environment was also good; they seemed pretty relaxed and were either swimming or completely chilling out on the rocks!!

The following day, as we loved our previous walk so much, we got out the map and chose another walk to do, this time a forest walk, no running this time as it was pretty steep and almost all uphill, but again very rewarding with great views and great fitness.

The main event in Kaikoura, however, is the whale watching, so we booked on a boat trip to go out and  see the magnificent Sperm whales. Hover all trips were cancelled due to the Chile earthquake the day before causing tsunami warnings in the whole of NZ!! Hopefully we will get back to Kaikoura in a few weeks time…..

Our final day in the Alpine Triangle was superbly rounded up with a trip to the beautiful and hot area of Waipiura, the biggest winery region in NZ, a perfect place for our first ever wine tasting!

We stopped at a beautiful winery called the “Mud House”, which also boasted a gourmet café, so after our lunch of a “mud” pie we started our 30  minute wine tasting. We learnt how to swish, smell and taste the wines, about 10 wines in total, and took a hot but lovely walk around the vineyard!! Whether our knowledge of wines will be anymore thorough remains to be seen, but we can safely say that the Alpine Triangle is a good vintage everyone needs to try!