Monteith's Brewery and Landscaping for Foodies

I'm going to start this post by saying... It's HOT! I am one of *those* people who hardly ever classifies the weather as too warm, but as I type I'm sitting here in a t-shirt with my hair pulled away from my face feeling like the Wicked Witch of the West - I'm melting. Not bad for winter, eh?

Where did I leave off...

So, this was around the time that illness struck me the afternoon we were set to fly from Auckland to Christchurch (on the South Island). I didn't feel right, not bad, just knew something was a bit off. When we arrived in C-Church, we spent our three days there sleeping and intermittently walking around the rainy town. It wasn't all bad... we caught up on much needed sleep, however, this was not the last of the cold that (for me) lingered for over a week. Chris was a champ and took care of the invalid. Back to happenings...

When we left Christchurch, we drove across the country (doesn't that sound funny?!?) to Greymouth. Mostly, we kept on relaxing and nursing our colds back to health, but, we did manage to make it out in the name of beer.

Monteith's Brewery is a really well known and well respected brewery in New Zealand. As with many businesses, in the name of *progress*, it is no longer privately owned and has been absorbed by another big distribution company - with the number of specialty brews significantly cut back. The 12 remaining people who work for the company have all been there for years and years... and do everything. Literally, everything! When it's a brewing day, the two brewers work for 14 hours straight until it's done. When it's a bottling day, other crew members pitch in to help the two brewers who now become bottling experts. It's actually pretty cool that it's such a small operation now. Two men make all the beer they are so famous for...

We saw everything from start to finish... all the tanks, the fermentation, the filtering and cooling systems. Chris stayed and sampled beer at the end of the tour while I, wiped out after a short stint out, settled into the car to fall asleep again. Monteith's Original was his favorite, by the way, although we have actually taken to drinking Tui beer while here - which is named after a warbling local bird.

Now we loved the South Island - as everyone here calls it "the pretty island" - but part of the insight that you get with me writing this in retrospect is... well, the perspective of time. I'm going to now show you the record of one of three glorious days we had in our entire time on the South Island. We just didn't know it yet...

Does everyone know that Chris and I met over pancakes at a local brunch hangout? Well, when we heard there was such a thing as "Pancake Rocks" we had to go see!!! I hope you can see a bit of the detail in the pictures. The limestone rock formations here have, and are, eroding into evenly spaced, flat, oddly shaped disks that lay one on top of another. It's really a pretty cool thing to see. Piles after piles of them are formed into neat stacks and it appears to go on forever. It's set up as a national park that you can just wander through. There are also natural blow holes where the incoming tide slams against the rocks and forces huge columns of water up through the holes between the formations. It's really something. When I get home and get all the pictures posted to flickr, you can peruse through at your leisure.

Can't you be patient?