Motueka Hospitality

After driving around the wine- and hop-growing back roads of Motueka for a morning, we had a spot of lunch on Motueka's seaside.

Then we accepted Jennifer and Tony's very generous offer of a place to sleep for the night, and piloted HAL to their comfortable country home.

I swear I felt I had stepped through a portal and back to the Shuswap of my childhood. Here was an all-native-wood, craft-built house on a small farmstead (complete with cows, cats and very tame pet chickens) with wood stove heating and a comfortable, homey atmosphere like I've not felt in years. Ahh, just like home.

Among other great features of the property was a "lemonade tree".  It produced a fruit that looked like lemons, but was actually a milder, sweeter, lemonade-tasting fruit.

And this gangly, reaching beast?  A golden kiwifruit plant!

Yep, there they are, golden kiwifruit.  Much easier to spot than their elusive, semi-nocturnal namesake birds.

Jennifer and Tony didn't just offer us a place to park HAL - they invited us to a BBQ dinner in their house, and even drove me down to the local craft brewery and, despite my best attempts, purchased all the beer for the evening!  Monkey Wizard was a cool little growler-filling brewery (housed in a former butcher's), though it's presently for sale.

We tasted a few beers, and settled on a raspberry wheat beer and a hoppy pale beer for the evening.  I also tasted the very exclusive Steampunk Belgian Dark Strong Ale - the only beer in the world made with ambergris.  I'm not sure I could detect a lot of ambergris flavour other than a bit of mineral and saltiness (not knowing what to anticipate), but it was a fantastic opportunity just the same.

Tony put on a great BBQ, featuring steak from cattle raised on their farm, and produce from their garden.  Amazing.

After dinner I played a little piano with Jen and Tony's kids Pico and Zinnia, which was wonderful.  I showed them a couple of my grandfather's traditional duets, and they picked them up in no time at all.

Zinnia was nice enough to show me their treehouse, which you had to climb up to - no ladders.  And you had to be a good climber to get there!

She even showed us her collection of mini crab shells.

Pico had a pretty cool venus fly trap - complete with trapped flies!

And to top it all off, Pico (and Tony) made apple spice cake for dessert, which was incredible.

Overall we were overjoyed to spend an evening with Jennifer, Tony, Pico and Zinnia, and were so thankful for their boundless hospitality and generosity.  It was the perfect NZ experience, and we only hope we can return their generosity one day.  [Jen and Tony, we never got a photo of your family - we'd love to put one on this blog if you'd care to email it to us!]