Campervan Day 4

Finally a nice, cloudless day!!  It was nice to be able to see the view when we woke up in the morning.  Our Holiday Park was right near the ocean with a great view of the mountains as well.  We decided to go and get an activity booked before starting our exploration of Kaikoura.  Because the conditions were near perfect, all the whale watch tours were completely booked for the day.  We decided to add ourselves to the waiting list for the 4 afternoon tours because the guy said the chances were pretty good if we came back at that time.  We then drove out to South Bay to begin the peninsula walk to see the entire peninsula of Kaikoura along the coast and right out to Point Kean and the seal colonies out there.  The views were beautiful but some of the hills were pretty steep as we had to get up onto the cliffs that overlooked the ocean.  We had some pretty close encounters with a couple of seals and boy are they smelly!!  Usually, in low tide you are supposed to be able to walk around the shore a bit after climbing down some stairs out on the tips of the peninsula and eventually find the stairs to get back up again.  Well the tide had come up far enough so that we weren’t able to get all the way around.  By the time we were informed of this, we had walked so far from the place we had gone down onto the shore we just decided to find our own way up.  We started on what looked like it could have been a path used a couple of times, but close to the top as it go steeper the gravel and sand had slid down making it pretty difficult get a grip with our shoes.  We made it to the top were some people sat wondering where we’d come from!  by the time we had finished this section of the walk we were getting pretty hungry and we were running out of time before we had to go back to the whale watch place to see if we could fit onto one of the tours.  We had to be back there by about 3pm.  After a slight delay following a supposed walking trail to take us back to where we’d parked the campervan, only to find out it led us no where, we decided to walk straight to the cafe where we’d planned to have lunch, and worry about getting the van later (though we’d end up a few miles away from it at the cafe).  It turned out this was a great plan in the end!  We ate a pretty yummy lunch.  I had the vegan option of a lentil burger made with cashews and coriander served over toast with hummus and a small salad topped with avocado and beet root chutney.  We made our way back to the whale watch place from there and there was space for us on the 3:30 tour!  It’s possible that the worsened sea conditions and their warming of a high chance of sea sickness is what turned people away.  Being a water-loving family we weren’t scared away by it.  The swell was pretty large out on the water and there was quite a lot of sitting and waiting while they were trying to locate the whale.  About half of the boat were sick...I definitely would not have liked to be the “sea crew” on that vessel!  One guy’s job was basically to pass out sick bags and collect used ones and clean up after people who missed and try to keep people as comfortable as possible...yuck!   We were all fine, but at one point when we had to come back inside the boat and sit down it was not fun having to listen to all the seasick passengers!  On a better not though, we did see a massive sperm whale!  He was at the surface when we first went out and dove down showing a nice view of his fluke.  We also saw lots of playful dusky dolphins and an albatross while waiting about an hour for Tiaki (that was what this particular whale has been named) to resurface.  We were lucky enough to see him again and then dive again before we returned to shore (though I’m sure there were many passengers who wouldn’t have minded missing the second viewing)! 

Luckily, the whale watch departed from South Bay (where we had abandoned our campervan earlier) and they bused us over there!  So we just didn’t take the bus back and saved probably an hour long walk.  We instead hopped right on the road to Christchurch, about a 2.5 hr drive away!  Making a quick pitstop at McDonald’s to use the free WIFI (when I posted yesterday’s blog, it’s really a day or so behind...) we arrived around 11pm, checked in and went to sleep!  Finally, we had a nice full day of activity with nice weather, but it was pretty exhausting!

Home in Kaikoura

couldn't go up the path cause the tide came in and blocked our way!

Tiaki