Kaikoura - mountains and ocean

We took a quick detour on our trip south to view Cloudy Bay vineyard and the lovely Marlborough wine region, which is very reminiscent of Napa Valley. It was too early for wine drinking so we headed off in glorious sunshine, down the coast to Kaikoura, which has to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. On a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific, with huge mountain ranges framing the small bays, another impossibly lovely view meets you at every turn. Before we’d even reached the village we saw seals playing in the sea and took a short walk up a stream to a waterfall, where the seal pups play in the winter. The day was sunny and clear so we decided to go immediately for a whale watching flight.
Wings over Whales flies tiny, 8 seater planes out over the ocean in order to spot the sperm whales who make the deep trenches off the coast here their home. At 15 they head down to Kaikoura where the feeding is good and spend 15 bachelor years, hanging out with their mates before reaching 30 and swimming back to the seas around Tonga to mate! We were lucky enough to see about 5 or 6 on the 30 minute flight, getting a great view of these huge creatures as the plane circled and dropped to about 500 feet above the ocean. We saw two swimming along together and two more dive, whilst the others were just chilling out on the surface. The pilot had to be a great multi tasker; spotting the whales, pointing them out to us and avoiding another aeroplane and a helicopter, amazing but I guess he does it several times a day! In the evening we took a 5 km walk from the camp site, along the sea front to The Pier restaurant for a splendid seafood supper and drank a glass of Marlborough sparkling as the sun set on the mountains and the sea crashed below us.
As forecast, the next day was grey with patchy rain so we set off to take the peninsula walk. Quite a long one, even for us, which took about 5 hours with lots of climbing up and down cliff paths. The scenery was stunning though and the route took in the seal colony, so we got a real close up view of the seals resting on the rocks around the headland. They look for all the world like men who’ve had a jolly good Sunday lunch and are having their postprandial nap on the couch! As we arrived back into town it started to rain and we heard the terrible news about the earthquake so we headed back to the sanctuary of our van and watched the scenes unfolding on the local news. We cooked our own supper indoors to avoid the weather but since we’d messed up on the water emptying so the sink wouldn’t drain I still got pretty damp heading to the kitchen to do the washing up – the joys of camping!
On the third day we did the dolphin watching tour which I’ve written about separately. The exertions of the hiking and then spending 3 hours balancing on a rocking boat flared up an old rugby injury of John’s so we had a quiet afternoon sheltering from the rain in the van. Since Kaikoura actually means ‘Eat Lobster’ in Maori and lobster is one of John’s favourites, we couldn’t really leave town without trying out the local provenance, we headed to Sonic where John enjoyed his crayfish supper and I had some fabulous NZ mussels.
Next day the sun came out again and we could see the mountains. The sea was sparkling as we headed on down the coast and through the mountains to the coastal plain. We had been planning to stop in Christchurch but instead we headed round the outskirts of town and booked into a small park in Ashburton, about 60 miles south. Rather ordinary compared with the wonders of Kaikoura but a convenient stopover. The park is full of refugees from the devastated city with queues for the laundry and the showers as there is no running water or mains drainage in Christchurch at present. At the supermarket there was no bread, milk or bottled water so I hope people are coping alright. Petrol is running low so we queued to fill up the tank this afternoon at about the last place in town with any left. It’ll see us on a lot of the trip though not all the way to Queenstown but then these are minor concerns compared with what the Cantabrians have to deal with. Hopefully they will get all the help they need.