Dunedin to Kaikoura

July 25, 2009

Today was a travel day so there probably isn’t much to say about it. We met A this morning at 8 am, had breakfast and then headed over to the Dunedin Farmers Market downtown. It’s much smaller than Nelson’s market but it was wonderful. It had about three rows of vendors to walk through and explore. We loaded up again on goodies to take with us on our travels, including creamy cheeses, sausage, fresh bread and taboulli (random, I know). We then dropped A off at her work and said our goodbyes before heading over to Baldwin Street. Baldwin Street has the distinction of being the steepest street in the world. Raven has gone up it in her car before but we weren’t feeling quite as adventurous so we took pictures from the bottom instead. We then left Dunedin and headed north. We had an original goal of reaching Kaikoura from Dunedin. If you look at a map of the South Island in New Zealand you’d see that Dunedin is far to the south and Kaikoura is up north. As we went along we started to wonder if this was a good idea or not.

We drove north and I really wanted to see the big boulders at Moeraki. They are these big, round balls of stone scattered in the sand. I’ve seen lots of pictures of them and here was my big chance to take pictures as well. We parked at the lot and started walking along the beach. It was a gorgeous day so the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We noticed a bunch of shells that we hadn’t seen in other parts of New Zealand so we beach combed a bit and stuck some shells in my pocket. We then approached the rocks and began to take pictures. Every time I would try to take a picture the same guy kept walking in view of the picture. It was uncanny. I may be on the other side of the rocks but somehow he’d find his way into the shot. Raven had me climb into a broken boulder and took a picture of me. I was close to getting my foot stuck in it. That would have been cute.

After exploring the beach we took the advice of the guidebook and went to a restaurant called Fleur’s Place, which specializes in seafood. Raven had the seafood chowder and I decided to be brave and have the NZ specialty of green lipped mussels. Mmm. It was a very cute little restaurant and the food was superb. It was well worth the stop into Moeraki.

When we got back into the car we realized that it was already after 2 pm and we were only an hour or so outside of Dunedin. We were really, really far away from Kaikoura and decided to play it by ear and see where we ended up. I was fretting a little bit because I really wanted to go sea kayaking in Kaikoura but we just played it by ear. We finished the last couple of CDs from Harry Potter and were out of audio books by the time we made it to Christchurch. Raven was apprehensive because we were arriving in Christchurch around 5 and she didn’t want to get stuck in rush hour traffic. Except, it was Saturday so all was well! To entertain ourselves since we were out of Harry Potter, we started singing cheesy camp songs. It was really funny. We then played the alphabet game, except we got stuck on the letter J. You get really creative when you don’t have any more books on tape!

We did make it into Kaikoura and it was about 8 pm when we arrived. We drove to the YHA and got out of the car. We walked up to the door and looked through the window, noticing that the gate to reception was closed. Uh oh. We decided to get back into the car and call them to see if there was any way we could make a reservation. Raven called and the woman answering asked if we’d tried the door. She was there the whole time and didn’t we feel stupid for not trying to open it. LOL. We settled in, had a light dinner and relaxed for the rest of the evening, quite pleased that we made it from Dunedin to Kaikoura in one day.