Catamaran cruise through the Marlborough Sounds

Bipi goes Kiwi....

.... when I saw a report about the Marlborough Sounds on TV about 10 years ago, I wished I could go there, but I didn't really think it was possible. And now I'm here! 😅🚢 What an incredible gift to be able to experience that... 🙏

It was simply breathtaking... I have never seen such beautiful surroundings! Oh yes, the catamaran was not a sailboat but a motorboat, but that did not spoil the atmosphere. We had the perfect timing for the 3.5 hour long tour... Bright blue skies with a light breeze...

The motto of the tour was 'the greenshell mussels tour' and we had freshly cooked mussels with a delicious sauvignon blanc from the Marlborough Sounds on board. We drove past the mussel breeding beds. The mussels are huge and, as the name suggests, green! They taste delicious, a bit more intense than the well-known mussels.

Every house on the hills of the fjords can only be built by delivering the materials by helicopter. There are no roads on the hills.

In the photos you can see completely bare skeletons of pine trees on the hills. These are being systematically eradicated because they are not native trees and destroy other vegetation. There was mutual sympathy for the pine trees among the guests on board. 🌲The guests came from Brazil, California, Australia, Romania and Issum. 😂

In the photos with the seagulls behind the ship, the cook has thrown bread overboard and in no time at all, catfish, which are already quite large, came to the surface next to the birds... 🐟 In June and July, humpback whales also come to the fjords.

(As I write this, it's 8.35pm and we're back at sea heading towards Napier and we're in a massive storm with wind force 9 🤔😳 and the boat is rattling...)

It was a wonderful day, couldn't have been more beautiful and tomorrow we're heading to Napier on the east coast of the North Island.