Kaikoura

Tuesday, 10 March 8:41 pm

I had the most amazing weekend. M and I drove up to Kaikoura, a town about 2.5 hours north of Christchurch on the coast. The drive there was fantastically beautiful—full of tall grassy green mountain hills lined with hedgerows and dots of sheep, with a backdrop of stunning brown peaks. Until about two hours in, we were about 10 kilometers inland from the ocean. About 20 kilometers from Kaikoura, though, the road joined with the shore and snaked along the cliff side above turquoise water that looked like the Aegean. Kaikoura was on just a setting: the town itself was on a small flat area right on the ocean nestled between an elevated peninsula and steep mountains behind it.


We checked into our hotel, which turned out to be very nice—they gave us a free upgrade to a room downstairs staring right out into the ocean, with a jacoozy bath and velvety white robes hanging in the closet. We got takeout fish and chips in town for lunch, and ate on a rocky beach. That afternoon we decided to take a walk on the peninsula that the concierge recommended to us. The walk was amazing—it went along a cliff side right over the bright blue waters, where a seal colony attracted tourists by the parking lot. We walked along the edge of cow/sheep pastures, which were very beautiful and green, although provided very little shade. Still, it was very pleasant. From the peninsula we looked inland to the towering mountains that looked like the edges of them fell into the water, and out to the less exciting but still beautiful blue horizon. After an hour each way we were tired enough to go back to our hotel.


After going back to our hotel and using their internet for about half an hour, we put on our bathing suits and went across the street to the long beach of gray pebbles that fell quickly into the rolling waves. We sunbathed for about 30 minutes, after trying to get part-way in the water and deciding it was way too cold. The pebbles were very warm, so it was very comfortable.


That evening we got dinner at a restaurant a little ways from our hotel, which was very nice. It seemed to be the only restaurant in town that had outdoor seating and an ocean view, and as a plus had very good food.On the way home we stopped at an amazing playground of the town's elementary school. That playground was the best I think I've ever been on-- It was huge, a lot of the areas made for bigger people than 1st graders (although most places were still hard to fit into). The main structure was huge, and went very high off the ground. Off one side of the second level, maybe about 15 feet off the ground, there was a log, about 10-15 feet long, set up like a tight rope. All that was below it was rocks, and it only had small, low, far-away chains on either side for handrails. The log was set up so it wasn't completely set, so when you walked on it it swayed. It was utterly terrifying. I have no idea how the school got the insurance company to okay that....

The next morning we had a booking to go on a whale watching boat. It was amazing—the people who ran it were very nice, the boat was fast, and it was pretty stable—it was a catamaran, and a very nice day, which meant there was little rocking. After we drove out about five miles while the three-person Maori crew (the company prizes itself that it is a Maori owned and operated company, which means all the boat operators they employ are Maori) gave us safety instructions and told us a little bit about sperm whales. Soon they found a whale that was on the surface, and after catching up with it they let us go outside to watch. It was so fantastic—I had never seen a sperm whale before, and although they aren’t exactly the most elegant shape, it was still quite majestic in the water. My mom absolutely adored it. We watched it breathing on the surface for about ten minutes, then the crew told us it was about to dive—I got the perfect picture just when it’s tail was at its highest point, with the humongous mountains back on land as a background.

We saw three more whales, which was more than twice the average number of whales per tour according to the crew, and I even got a video of one diving. I put in on google vids, so you can all watch it. It is very shaky, because the boat was rocking a fair amount, and the web-version is pretty low-res, but still worth the watch.

On the way back, they took us into a pod of 500+ dusky dolphins playing on the surface. That was quite fantastic—they were everywhere, jumping and playing. The sound of them all breathing was nothing like I had ever heard before—Ican’t even describe it. A few times a dolphin would jump repeatedly high into the air and flip completely over twice, landing with a flop and a slash into the water. They would do this dozens of times repeatedly, looking quite silly but very neat. I took a video of the dolphins too, which is also definitely worth watching. It may take forever to load, but worth the wait (if I do say so myself). The links to both those videos are below:

Whale: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3461753510284014755

Dolphins: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3350548330804183061

That afternoon, after getting fish and chips again from a takeout place across the street from the one we went to the day before, we went back to the hotel and again put on bathing suits. It was much earlier, more like two than five, so the sun was brighter and the pebbles hotter. The sun felt so good, and although I could tell I was getting a little burnt I didn’t want to leave it. There’s a certain wonderful feeling of soaking up buckets of sun on an exposed back—very energizing. M got a little sun stricken, so we moved into the shade for awhile. After about an hour we took a very hot, sunny, and sticky walk that wasn’t meant to be very long (we had already walked a fair amount that day), but it ended up feeling very very far on the way back. When we got back to the hotel I took I cool bath, which felt wonderful (kind of like swimming but in a very small, un-chlorinated pool). That evening we went back to the same restaurant we ate at the night before, after spending about half an hour trying to figure out where to eat and finding no better ideas. It was very comfortable and yummy yet again. We went back to the playground as well.

The next morning, sadly, we had to leave. The drive back was as beautiful as the drive there, and along the way we took a few side trips to towns on the coast. Those little trips were amazing—the roads were beautiful and fun to drive on (thin and through mountainous farmland), and the ocean still spectacular when we got back to it. We got some lunch at a super market on the main highway (crackers and dip, mostly), then drove into a side road to a town I saw market on the map. It turned out that there wasn’t actually a town there, just a few empty houses who’s inhabitants were standing a hundred feet below us by the ocean where a giant river flower into it fishing. We found a bench overlooking the whole area, and ate our water crackers, bell pepper dip, and salami in the freezing wind. It was wonderful. Eventually, though, we had to drive back home.

That weekend was so much fun. We got a fair amount of sun, too—my back did end up getting a little red, but not so much it hurt. My feet have a very distinct Chaco tan now (my shoes—they are sandals with diagonal straps, so the tan left by them is a zig-zag triangle pattern), which I always love. It was pretty warm today in Christchurch, but now is very windy and rainy—although I miss the sun and bech, I do enjoy storms.

Well, I’m going to go to bed. Or at least decide I’ve done enough for one night and don’t have to work anymore. I know I really shouldn’t be putting off this paper I have to write, that it would be easier just to get it over with it, but it’s so easy to procrastinate. Oh well, I’ll work more on it tomorrow. Tonight I have a good excuse for not working on it (the blog). Besides, I’m feeling very music-deprived, and my iPod has been charging while I’ve been writing this. It’s so hard not having my computer (it’s a hard knock life, for me, da la la la hum hmm da) with all my iTunes and constant internet.

OH did I tell you that I looked into buying the soundtrack to Hey, Hey, it’s Esther Blueburger? Well, it turns out that they only have the soundtrack in the NZ and AUS iTunes stores, not the US one, and I can’t buy music on a different account until I use up all the gift certificate money I have in my US one. Bother. I could just open a new account, but I’m worried that for some reason I wouldn’t be able to transfer the music, or burn it on to a US CD because of country codes. Bother bother.

Okay, I’m going to go listen to Missy Higgins and draw, another thing I feel very deprived of.

Hmm, maybe the Across the Universe soundtrack.

Hmm. Decisions decisions.