Several days ago we tired of the five-day working week and
took off the Christchurch on Thursday. We’d booked the trip some time ago, our
original intention to ski in Queenstown/Wanaka. The weather gods weren’t on our
side, however, so we went to Kaikoura instead – a tourist hotspot heavily
damaged in an earthquake last year.
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| Getting ready to sleep... in an old train carriage! |
The road to Kaikoura is only open 7am-6pm, so we stopped off
at Waipara sleepers (where we last stayed during Simon’s visit) to sleep in a
converted railway carriage.
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| #onlyaslightfilter |
Arising at dawn, we drove up the coastal highway – still in
a state of reconstruction – to try our hand at whale watching (for which
Kaikoura is famous). However, we weren’t well positioned on the waiting list,
so instead went to try our legs at Mt Fyffe, a three-to-five hour ascent just seaward of the seaward Kaikoura mountain range.
We saw the walk as training for November’s Inca Trail
(coming to a blog near you soon), which it was. The spring in the air wasn’t
quite as active as the spring in our step, leaving the top quite snowy. This
allowed great photos, but limited the laziness of our lunchtime (where we enjoyed some juicy Craigend grapefruit). We descended to a nice little Bach we had
hired for the weekend, stopping off at to eat a genuinely delicious rabbit
(yes, RABBIT) covered pizza.
Another morning, another attempt at the whale watching waiting
list, and another disappointment. Not to be downhearted, we saw what else
Kaikoura had to offer, which turned out to be a lot.
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| A Cormorant/Shag |
We went on a walking tour with Sue, a genuine Kaikourian.
She told us about historic Māori wars, a more recent whale hunting past, and
the very recent construction of an ugly and expensive council building. We then
went sea kayaking with Connor. Connor showed us lots of seals, even more rare sea birds (Hutton's Shearwater or Titi) and the locale of some underwater hot springs that emerged post-earthquake, which
he named after his daughter Hope.
Dora tried to finish the afternoon with a nap, but I bundled
us out onto a run around the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway instead, which provided lovely
sunset views of the coastline, risen from the sea in the earthquake, and a dark and spooky view of the forest on the
way home. We arrived home safely though, in time to head out to see the All
Blacks win a thrilling game against the Wallabies. Jubilation and relief erupted from the pub's previously nonchalant occupants on the winning try.
Third time lucky, we were upgraded from ‘the waiting list’
to ‘the list’ on Sunday, and thus boarded a boat to see the famous Kaikoura sperm whales. These
mammals helpfully use noise to traverse the Kaikoura trench that attracts them
to the region, so were fairly easy to track down with a listening trumpet on a stick. Although the trench is as deep as the Kaikoura ranges are high, our boat awaited their
return to the surface, filled with tourists clasping poised cameras.
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| Sperm whale dives to the depths for another 45-minute feed, where is uses sonic waves to knock fish unconscious then hoovers them up. Dora looks on enviously. |
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| An Albatross -
"And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo! "
|
We were not disappointed. Two sperm whales, lots of birds,
and a pod of hundreds of frisky Dusky Dolphins later we returned to the shore with our
natural world needs sated.
We fancied some relaxation after the busy days, so drove
inland to Hamner Springs to ‘take the waters’. These smelled
quite eggy, but were genuinely relaxing (until I tried to do an underwater
forward roll and splashed everyone).
Our long weekend was coming to a close. A drive back to
Christchurch – punctuated by a stop at a moderately good café-restaurant-bar –
led us to the ‘Jucy Snooze’ airport hotel, where we crammed in some sleep ahead
of a Monday morning flight into work.
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