Kaikoura – this is NZ

The drive down through the Marlborough vineyards, including a detour along the Wairauvalley to photograph the vineyards nestling below the mountains and a visit the Spy Valley winery… St Oswalds geocache… lunch at The Store at Kekerengu… seal colonies by the coast roadside… and we hadn’t even arrived at Kaikoura.

We stayed at Hapuku Lodge – see the separate blogentry.

Kaikoura is Maori for “crayfish food” and the sea and Maori culture underpin the town. Our first morning whale watching could have been a disaster. With a thirty knot wind and my previous experience of whale watching consisting of hanging over the side of a pitching converted North Sea trawler off Norway looking for orca, things didn’t bode well. The Kaikoura trip was curtailed due to the wind and more than half the passengers staring into seasick bags, but I walked away unscathed, albeit with no whale sightings. Rebooking for the next day – we’d allowed a day’s contingency – was straightforward.

Fresh from the waters, we spent the afternoon with Heather, Karen and Maurice of Maori Tours, experiencing Maori culture first hand and learning about the area. Unlike the touristy Maori experiences around Rotorua, this was a very personal hands-on afternoon – visiting Maori sites, learning Maori songs and weaving skills, and out in the rainforest hearing of traditional uses of natural resources. Not to be missed.

Next morning was bright, blue and very calm. The Kaikoura coastline looked stunning - to one side the wonderful Kaikoura Ranges (Looker-on Mountains as named by Cook when he passed along the coast), and to the other side the stunning blue hue that denotes this part of the NZ coast. Sperm whales, dusky dolphins darting below and around the boat (sadly their playful leaps out of the water were too far away to photograph, but still a sight to behold), albatross. Awesome.