Day 17 – Kaikoura I

Note:  You cannot see Pete’s videos from the email.  Go to the actual webpage. (Click on Day 17 – Kaikoura I, in blue, above.)  The email is incomplete and does not include video clips.

GOOD DAY, MATES!  This morning we left Nelson and traveled southeast to Kaikoura.

SOME NOTES ON THE HOTELS:  Many inns in NZ have well stocked kitchenettes. They all have tea kettles, coffee, tea, cocoa, cold milk and cookies on hand.  This one in Nelson has a fridge, stove, sink, microwave, cookware and dinnerware.  Other inns have ovens, dishwashers and built-in washers & dryers.   We have washed clothes every 4th day.  (What a luxury to have our suitcases full of clean clothes.)  Unlike LA, NZ seems to have no premium on space, so the rooms are large, and oftentimes a rental includes a second bedroom, which we have used to house our luggage.

Love the heated towel racks; towels dry quickly this way.  Some inns even have heated floors.  Dual-flush toilets (for water conservation) are the norm here, but any water saved by them is wasted on all the huge spa bathtubs that we saw, which use tons of water.  GO FIGURE.

On our road trip to Kaikoura, we took a short hike to a suspension bridge in a forest (FYI a Hobbit location).

The bridge bounces up and down as you walk across it.

It has a 10 person limit.

Our first sighting of snow on the Southern Alps was a few miles short of Kaikoura.  As we are driving southerly (toward Antarctica), the daylight is becoming shorter and shorter, and the temperature is becoming cooler and cooler.

View of the Alps and the Pacific Ocean from Kaikoura

Video: This male bird is selling itself, but the female birdie isn’t buying?  Or do Kiwi lady birds play hard to get?

View from our hotel room in Kaikoura.  Kaikoura is a famous marine wonderland, full of sperm whales, lobsters, albatross, dolphins, and fur seal reserves.

Our pad for the next couple nights is in another boutique hotel, the White Morph.

The flat-like rental includes a well stocked kitchenette with a washer / dryer combo.

UNBELIEVEABLE VIDEO CAPTURE!  We saw hundreds of baby fur seals in a freshwater stream, playing under a waterfall.  Their parents were on the rocks in the ocean below, but the babies had been left in a protected natural nursery.  We never knew that seals like the freshwater.

So far we have not taken a picture of the sheep that populate both islands, the most common sight in NZ, but here is a picture of a lamb shank Pete ate for dinner.  The green stuff is pea pesto / puree.  I just couldn’t get myself to eat one of those cute little lambs, so I ordered the vegetarian pasta.