Immediately we saw that the landscape is very different from what we had become accustomed to on the north island, with very few trees and brown, parched land. We knew we would soon be driving through the heart of the Marlborough Wine Country, New Zealand's largest wine-producing area, with vines and wineries lining the road, but at first this seemed unlikely.
Our trusty Daihatsu.
Tucking into our mussels, we fell into conversation with a couple from Auckland who had been visiting their daughter, son-in-law and grand-daughter in Christchurch (delivering a tree-house they had made) when the quake struck. All were safe, and their house was undamaged, but the grandparents had decided to head back home as they felt their daughter had enough on her hands without them too.
Another 35 kms. along the road we reached Ohau Point, and parked by the road to look at south island's largest seal colony. There were dozens of them lolling on the rocks just a few metres away.
Click on the video below to see seals playing in a rock pool.
Kaikoura Town.
Kaikoura gets its name from the Maori words kai (meaning food) and koura (crayfish).
If we'd followed our first impressions we'd have driven straight through Kaikoura without a backward glance. A dull straggle of shops and restaurants, in a town obviously over-commercialised, wasn't at all appealing. We knew that the town had boomed since the 1980s when 2 companies had begun large-scale whale-watching tours and it didn't seem to have benefitted aesthetically.
But we were booked in for 2 nights, and so we decided to give it a second chance and explore.
A good decision, as it turned out.
Maybe they had learned from the lessons of the 1980s and were determined to preserve what was good about the place and not sacrifice everything in the name of commercialism.
The town's oldest building is an old whaler's cottage, built in 1842 and sitting on its original whalebone foundations. Whaling had been a very prosperous, albeit very dangerous, industry in the late 19th century, and the house stands on what had at that time been a thriving port and town.
The house has only been owned by 3 families since that time, and there are interesting room exhibits inside telling its history.
Avoca Street
Just round the corner from the house huge fur seals were lounging on flat rocks.
We were able to get really close to them to take photos, and they were totally unconcerned.
Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway:
We had intended to take a whale-watching boat trip but the weather was so rough that day we decided against it, and set out on a long walk (3 hours) instead. If we hadn't we would never have seen just how beautiful this piece of coastline is.
Along the way we met up with Bob and Wendy, from Melbourne. They had had the same opinion of Kaikoura town as us but, like us, loved the coastal scenery.
They were intrepid travellers, visiting Europe for 6-8 weeks each year, usually to follow bike racing. Bob had been a championship-quality cyclist and, he may have been 73 but he was hard to keep pace with at times.
Dusky Lodge
The place we stayed at in Kaikoura isn't going to get too many recommendations from us, but the views in the morning were superb.
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