The Travel Sage
Picton, New Zealand – A Great Cruise Stop
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One of my favorite stops on our 14 day cruise of Australia and New Zealand was Picton, NZ. This town sits on the northeastern tip of New Zealand’s south island in an area called Marlborough Sounds. Marlborough Sounds is actually made up of many individual sounds, the largest of which is Queen Charlotte Sound. The geography here is pretty unique; the coastline juts out in irregular ways forming a maze of waterways.
Mark and I and our friend Dave had two cruise excursions planned that day. The first one was a private flight over Marlborough Sounds in a small, single-engine plane. The company, Pelorus Air, offers 3 different flight options, a 20 minute flight, a 45 minute flight with a remote beach landing, and a 1 hour 15 minute flight with beach landing. We took the middle option. You can book directly on their website, but if you book the same excursion through Viator*, for essentially the same price, you don’t pay until 2 days before the flight, you can get a full refund up to 24 hours before departure, and you pay directly in U.S. dollars.
The owner of the company, Chris, who was our pilot/guide, met us at the information center in Picton, where the ship’s shuttle dropped us off. Chris drove us 10 minutes to the “Picton Airport” which was more like a landing strip with a few hangers than an actual airport.
Mark got to be co-pilot, but we all felt pretty official in our head gear.
The takeoff was smooth and we started the flight with a flyover of our ship.
The scenery was stunning and I was amazed that most of the land was uninhabited.
The white water in the photo below are rapids that are formed by tides due to the narrow channel between these two pieces of land.
We started descending as we got near our landing spot.
At first it appeared we were just going to fly into the side of the mountain, but then the strip of grass came into view. It was a smooth landing!
After landing, our pilot Chris parked the plane just over the sand dune from the beach. It turns out that the property we landed on belongs to Chris’ parents. While we explored the beach, he walked down a wooded path to visit his parents at their house. The beach was covered in smooth flat rocks and we found a few treasures.
After about 20 minutes of exploring the beach, we had another smooth takeoff. And the scenery was just as stunning on the way back.
After landing back at the tiny airport we were driven back to the Picton visitor’s center. From there we headed over to the waterfront where we picked up our next cruise excursion, a mailboat cruise*. Well, if you’ve never heard of a “mailboat cruise”, you aren’t alone, but it’s a thing in the Marlborough Sounds. Because of the geography here, many homes are hours from the nearest town by car, but maybe only 15 minutes by boat; so delivering the mail by boat makes more sense. However, people are so dispersed that it really isn’t feasible to deliver the mail by boat every day, so each location gets two deliveries a week. And to make mail delivery even more economical, they have combined it with tourism. Instead of delivering the mail in small boats, they use bigger passenger boats and provide commentary along the way. From the crowds on our boat, they are clearly making a profit – at least in summer. Our tour was about 4 hours in the afternoon (they also have a morning run/tour). I really wanted to love it, but honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I was not expecting there to be that many people and I expected more outdoor seating. The experience would have been much better if you weren’t viewing everything from inside a big room where most seats were not near a window. There was an outdoor bench in the back of the boat that seated about 6 people, but the fumes from the engine were pretty bad back there. Thankfully, I was still wearing my Covid mask, so I was able to tolerate it. The photos of the tour online show a boat with rooftop seating, but sadly ours didn’t have that. Despite my disappointment, I still enjoyed the experience. We learned quite a bit and got to see a lot of unique wildlife.
There was one drop off for each cove, and someone was always there to accept the mail and give the outgoing mail. I guess that person had to coordinate with the other people who lived in the cove.
Sometimes we were greeted by dogs.
There was one stop where we were able to get off the boat and wander around for a little while. The place we stopped was called “Ship Cove” and it was the first place that the native Maori people spent a significant amount of time with the Europeans. I enjoyed taking some wildlife photos.
I enjoyed watching the birds and taking photos. My favorite bird was the western weka. I was amazed at how this flightless bird lifted rather large rocks with it’s beak in order to get to the critters hiding underneath.
Throughout the excursion we saw wildlife – much of which I’d never seen before. But I think the highlight was seeing the Hectors Dolphins. These endangered dolphins (estimated population of 7,000) are the smallest dolphins in the world and are only found in the waters off New Zealand.
I also got to see a rare bird – New Zealand’s King Shag. One feature that distinguishes this species from other shags/cormorants is the orange swelling found in front of their eye.
There were a lot of seals to be found. Some on rocks, other hanging out around the docks hoping for some free fish.
And although it wasn’t unique to New Zealand, having Bottlenose Dolphin play in your boat’s wake is always a thrill. And I was thrilled to get a photo (with my phone) of two dolphin jumping out of the water at the same time!
After getting back to the harbor we walked along Picton’s picturesque waterfront to the ship’s shuttle bus stop. Picton made for an excellent cruise stop that I highly recommend. If I ever find myself back in New Zealand, I’d love to spend a few days in the this area.
