Today, we took a quick 40-minute flight from the lower tip of the North Island in Wellington down to the northern tip of the South Island in Nelson. Kaia is very into all modes of transport, but she especially gets excited when we tell her we’re going to get on a plane. Now, she asks deeper questions, like what type of plane are we on? Granted, she’s not necessarily looking for answers like Airbus A380 or the Boeing 787 (aka the Dreamliner), but she does want to know if she’s on a small plane, a medium plane, or a big plane. She insists, as usual, that “I want the big one!” because she wants her own luxurious seat with her own TV and headset. Those are top concerns while flying for the Kaia Pookie now. In this specific case, she was not particularly pleased that we would be on a “small plane” and that she’d have no TV. Boo hoo.

Once again, we didn’t have to go through any security in the Wellington domestic terminal to board our quick flight to Nelson. Given it was a day trip, we also didn’t have much with us other than my purse and a canvas bag. When we arrived, Chris’s cousin came to greet and pick us up at the airport, and off we went on a full day’s itinerary lovingly planned by her.

We started our Nelson day trip at Pic’s Peanut Butter World. I always enjoyed peanut butter, but my love for peanut butter only came about once I discovered Massachusetts’s based Teddie Peanut Butter while I was in college in that state. In my opinion, their peanut butter is the best peanut butter I’ve ever had — the peanuts have a really well rounded flavor, and it has (what I consider to be) the perfect amount of salt — not too much, not too little, but just right! So when I heard Chris’s cousin and husband raving about Pic’s, of course I was intrigued, but I was also skeptical. I’d never been on a peanut butter factory tour, and obviously I’d welcome the opportunity. So we went altogether today with his cousin, her husband, and their baby, and we had the full experience. This included a guided tour, seeing the peanut butter factory line in action, and reading a lot of fun facts about both Pic’s and peanut butter in general. The tour ended with a tasting of a selection of their peanut butters and honey. And when we finally tasted the standard peanut butter with 0.5% salt (that’s their default), I tasted it… and I came to the quick conclusion that Teddie was still my number one peanut butter. There was no way Pic’s was going to dethrone Teddie for me. Since Chris’s cousin got us a family pass, it included two jars of peanut butter (styles of our choice out of three). So I definitely was going to take them home and eventually eat them. But even after this, I have yet to taste better peanut butter in the world than my beloved Teddie. That is all.

We stopped for some views and coffee in Mapua, then headed over to Moutere Hills Cellar Door for a winery lunch his cousins had booked us. We enjoyed a really delicious slow cooked New Zealand lamb shoulder with seasonal vegetables (New Zealand lamb in New Zealand was definitely on the to-do list while here!), and Chris enjoyed his glass of local reserve chardonnay so much that he decided to buy a bottle to bring back to Melbourne.

Then we had a real treat and surprise I was not expecting: Chris’s cousin organized a private berry picking experience for us. The usual berry farm they go to had shut down, but she wanted us to have the full local Nelson experience with berry picking given our trip was timed during the short window when the berries would be ripening. Unfortunately, the place she found said they wouldn’t be opening for another five days. She direct messaged the business on Instagram, telling them she had family visiting from New York City who would really, really enjoy a local New Zealand berry picking experience. Incredibly days later, the owner responded and said we could all come! But she noted that since we’d be about a week early, there wouldn’t be as much ripe fruit as we’d like. Chris’s cousin took that chance, and we went!

The farm was ripe with boysenberries and raspberries, and we managed to fill two punnets of both of these delicious berries. Boysenberries were particularly a treat for us: even though they are a hybrid berry originally created in the U.S. (it’s a blackberry, raspberry, dewberry, and a loganberry!), boysenberries are pretty much unheard of and unseen there unless you are lucky and manage to find a boysenberry jam jar. You see it more often in jams and ice creams in Australia and New Zealand, though, and I got so excited that we were actually going to pick these berries today! The owner came out and gave us a mini lesson on boysenberries: they need to be super dark reddish purple, almost black to be ripe and sweet. For these, you’d know if they were ready for sure if they came off easy when you pull them off. The red ones were NOT ready to be picked and would be too tart. Kaia had a field day eating endless berries right off the bushes and helping us fill the punnets. I loved seeing how excited she was, eagerly plucking the berries off the bushes and greedily shoveling them into her mouth. And she got an even bigger treat at the end: this farm specializes in “fresh fruit ice cream,” so soft serve with the fresh farm fruit blended in, so she got to have a cone of boysenberry fresh fruit ice cream — it was so creamy, fruity, and utterly delicious. We also picked raspberries, but this was slower given far less berries were ready: most of the ripe raspberries were higher up on the shrubs and a bit harder to reach (especially for Kaia). I was actually surprised when comparing the raspberries to the boysenberries. I initially just assumed both berries were just as delicate as each other. Yet somehow after picking so many of each, I quickly realized that boysenberries were definitely far more delicate and easier to break/get squished. I guess that’s why boysenberries are usually used in jams and pies, and not easily sold in grocery stores or supermarkets.

We ended the day with a visit to Chris’s cousins’ home before being whisked back to the airport to catch our flight back to Wellington. Kaia enjoyed her time with her little baby cousin, and because Chris’s cousin packed us our freshly picked berries, she also has more fruits of her labor to enjoy the next few days. It was so fun to have a day trip fully planned and coordinated by Chris’s cousin, inclusive of transportation! It really was a treat to see how beautiful the northern tip of the South Island is — the view from their deck was so beautiful and serene. It was the complete opposite of the view from our windows in our Upper West Side high-rise apartment, where all you see is a concrete jungle with endless traffic below you.