Kaikoura

July 26, 2009

I woke up this morning and jumped out of bed to look out the window. I’ve been so excited to see the view of Kaikoura as it was one of my highlights the last time I was here. I don’t want to give the impression that I stayed out of bed, nor that I was awake because Raven would be the first person to tell you that I’m a delusional liar. I slowly got up and lazed around in my room, as did Raven as we knew we didn’t have any pressing plans. We decided to secure our rooms for one more night and see if we might be able to book a sea kayaking trip, which is something I’ve wanted to do this entire trip. The receptionist called for us and made a booking for 2 pm. Woohoo! We sauntered down to the kitchen, had a leisurely breakfast and were getting ready to wash dishes when a German girl came up to us in a panic because she was supposed to be at her whale watching trip and the cab didn’t show up. Raven kindly gave her a ride and while she did that, I cleaned up and went outside to take pictures of one of my favorite places on this planet.

When Raven returned, we got into the car and drove down to the center of town so that we could walk along the beach. We parked and walked to the beach, which is filled with little pebbles. There was a steep hill on the beach so we stomped down on the rocks and found our way down. We walked closer to the water and we listened for the rain stick sound that I love so much. The beach didn’t disappoint and we stood there mesmerized by the rain stick sound the water made when the water receded. We took pictures of seagulls, beach, mountains and waves and it was glorious. Kaikoura is hugged by gorgeous snowcapped mountains and it really dominates the town so it’s easy to get good pictures. We walked along the beach for a while, noticing that as we walked along, the rocks got smaller and smaller until they turned to sand. Also, the rain stick sound faded as the rocks got smaller. We saw three more oyster catchers (this was the third time on this trip and they’re actually a rare species) and took pictures of them and the seagulls and then headed back towards the car.

Time had flown by while we’d been on the beach and we had about an hour or so before our kayaking trip so we decided to get a quick bite to eat. I wanted to go to the Cray Pot, which is a restaurant that I went to and loved last time I was here so we went. I ordered a tomato and basil soup and a side salad. Sounds harmless enough. Ew! The salad had some nasty, sweet mayonnaise dressing on it, which I wouldn’t touch and the tomato soup was SWEET. Again, EW! Raven had also ordered the soup and we thought it was awful. Putting lots of salt in it helped a lot but it was not what we’d been hoping for. We didn’t eat all of it and were full enough for kayaking. We walked around the shops for a bit so that I could pick up a couple of items and then headed back to the hostel to get ready for kayaking. I had brought a bunch of clothes for precisely this purpose and was very happy to be able to make use of them. We got ready and at 10 minutes until 2, the kayaking people showed up so we went down and headed out.

Our guide Matty picked us up and told us that we were going to head out to the South Bay because the conditions were best for us there. This was good because that was where I wanted to go when the trip was described to us. We drove out to the beach (very close by) and got out the kayaks. Since Raven and I had gone kayaking numerous times he didn’t have to spend a lot of time talking about how to ride in a kayak. We decided who would be in front and who would be in back, took the kayaks down to the water (they’re heavy buggers) and got in. We had to quickly paddle out away from shore and our guide would meet us out in the open water because there were a lot of rocks in the water. Our guide directed us to the open water and we experienced the enormous swells on the water as we paddled to the sea. We gave the rocks a wide berth and we could see the water crashing against the rocks so we were happy to do so. We then paddled closer towards the edge of the inlet so we could see the seal colonies. We got close to shore and had to maneuver between two large groups of rocks, again with crashing waves so that we could get close to the seals. Yep, they were seals. I took pictures but I wasn’t that excited about seeing a bunch of seals, since I can see them in Washington as well. The guide was talking about them and we think he was running out of things to say because he started rambling on about the mountains. LOL! We headed back out and were going to go to the tip of the inlet when we all noticed a large spray of water in the distance and big boats racing towards it. It was a whale! Our guide got incredibly excited and asked if we wouldn’t mind going to see the whale instead of more seals. Hell yeah! He said for us to paddle like our lives depended on it so we huffed and puffed and puffed and huffed our way out into the middle of the bay, watching spouts blowing out water all over the place in the distance. Our guide was far ahead of us and had my camera (because he was going to take pictures of us in the kayak) and we kept paddling after him, noting that our stomach muscles were getting a serious workout. As we were coming closer, maybe 40 feet in front of us, two whales emerged, a mother and her calf! OMG! We all shouted and cheered because it was one of the most incredible experiences ever. They were RIGHT THERE! We watched them spout water and saw their humps. The whales went back down and we saw whales in the distance still spouting and I was wondering if there were any whales right under me. We took off the other direction, hoping to see the whales come closer. That mother and baby had indeed gone under us and came out on the other side. The whale boats came careening after the whales again and we were all making a mad dash to see the whales again. We had decided that they’d gone and were about to head back to shore when the whales appeared again! We hightailed it back towards the seal colony and saw the whales spout a few more times. The guide took a video of one of the whales with my camera as well as some video and pictures of me and Raven on our kayak. The guide was so excited by what we had seen (as were we). He said that seeing whales in the bay is incredibly rare and has only happened once this entire year. It was so much fun and so incredibly awesome. They are such beautiful creatures and being on the kayaks, we could hear the sound of the water bursting from the blow holes. It was just incredible. We finally did have to head back towards shore and did so slowly. We reached shore right before sunset and packed up the kayaks to head back into town.

When we got back to our rooms we briefly talked about dinner. For some reason, I was really craving steak so we decided to go out to eat. The woman downstairs in reception recommended “The Green Dolphin”, which turned out to be the perfect place. The steak was very yummy and we topped it off with dessert (cheesecake for me, creme brulee for Raven, not to mention wine (for me) and cider (for Raven). It was such a wonderful way to end an incredible day. It’s just been one of those days!