Day 13

14 April 2010

Today we drove to this beautiful little township called Kaikoura which was a mere 1 hour's drive away from Hanmer's Spring. The journey was wonderfully delightful as there was not a speck of rain in the vicinity.

Nature's swan song during autumn

The journey into Kaikoura from Hanmer's was an amazing transition - we emerged from the paddocks and hills into the coastal highway. One minute it was the hilly, golden fields, and the next - rocky beaches and the great sparkling ocean!! It's really crappy when you don't have photos to show, but Kaikoura was just brilliant!

The route was flanked by green mound and railway tracks on one side, and on the other was the sea. The big, vast, endless ocean - blazing blue and shimmering endlessly, dotted with jagged black basalt-like rocks. It was that magical, a mermaid would not look out of place, if she were to bask on one of those rocks.

Kaikoura Peninsula_google

We checked into a really dodgy caravan park but the weather was so damn good it made the place looked acceptable. We launched into a series of activities involving seals - seal watching, seal teasing, seal photographing & seal kayaking.

snoozing seal

That's because the NZ fur seals are everywhere! They are all over the rocky beaches and they conglomerate around an area dubbed the Seal Colony. While they may look cute & snuggly, harmless they are not. TV tend to portray them as docile or friendly but on land, these seals are quite aggresive and very territorial.

Seal Colony

Seal waving good riddance!

I did not enjoy the Seal Kayak too much as the sea was choppy and the seals stink! Was that close away from throwing up. We wandered into a local souvenir shop and the kindly shopowner directed us to a location unbeknownst to tourists where there were "wee baby seals". Later on we found out "wee" is an NZ slang for tiny.

wee seal_curioser & curioser

water babies

There were dozens of them, frolicking around an inland waterfall, being comically clumsy on land, but really graceful in water.They were similar to puppies, very playful, but because they are not domesticated (duh), constantly wary, yet perpetually curious.

wadya staring at?

Rest assured however, there are more than just seals in Kaikoura.