On Thursday Kaitlin and I embarked on our long-awaited honeymoon (can we call it a honeymoon 2.5 years late?) to New Zealand. We’ll be spending 13 days total in the country, visiting Auckland, Queenstown, Rotorua, and Tongariro. Our journey began with a 13 hour overnight flight from SFO-Auckland - surpisingly easy for me, I feel like I’ve had worse times on 6 hour redeyes across the country.
After landing around 9:30am, collecting our bags, and braving the strict customs (we had to declare our hiking boots!) we picked up our rental car and made the 40 minute drive to our hotel in the city center. We had a tentative plan to take the ferry to Davenport that afternoon, but arrived in the city a bit later than expected and did not want to cut it too close to our dinner reservation. We opted instead for a glass of wine and snack in the ferry building.
The highlight of the day and a true transition to vacation mode was our dinner at Cazador. We opted to splurge on both the 13 course “feast” meal and the beverage pairing. We do not usually get to experience this kind of dining, so it was a special experience. Cazador (Spanish for “hunter”) specializes in game meat from around New Zealand. Our waiter excitedly told us about the Wapiti deer jerky that we started with. The Wapiti live in the New Zealand fjordlands at the southern tip of the south island and are a cross between elk and red deer. The meat used to be very hard to find, as it required days of trekking into harsh lands with tough weather. Now, though, hunters are partnering with the New Zealand department of conservation to hunt the (apparently pesty) deer from helicopters! It sounded like this is going better than the Australian Emu war.
The beverage pairing portion of the meal featured four sherries and two lovely wines. The sherry experience was delightful, as both of us had only experienced the sweet sherry that most people are familiar with. We had 3 dry sherries poured at the same time, and they paired nicely with the three dishes: Longbush Pork coppa, duck parfait with sour cheery, and Sardine conservas with fermented leek and cucumber. The first, driest sheery (the driest wine in the world?) was particularly interesting - it was almost like a martini. It would be excellent with some olives or salty anchovies.
We finished off the meal with some sweet sherry and chocolate mousse. Our dining experience lasted from 5:45-8:00 - a wonderful experience that I can heartily recommend to anyone visiting Auckland.