We woke up at Totaranui campgrounds, brushed our teeth, changed and off we went! We were backtracking because we wanted to see a beautiful seaside town called Kaikoura before settling for a few days in Christchurch. We ended up backtracking almost all of the driving we did the day before, but it was worth it!
Let's look at a picture of today's driving:
Most of the time, when looking at the map, there seems like there should be a faster route, but because of the terrain there isn't. A super short distance can take hours if you can't go straight from point A to point B, but have to go around a mountain, for example. So, it's super frustrating to plan where you're going and think it's a short distance when looking at a map, then find out it's going to take 8 hours because you have to go all the way around the island. Luckily for us, I planned all this before we left Auckland, so we knew what we were in for as far as how much driving we were going to do each day. What you can never plan for are unpaved roads and weather, which did slow us down quite a bit. Oh well, it's all part of the adventure.
It's gonna be a long day, so we better get to it!
Since we're backtracking, we didn't really take many pictures or make any stops, since we had just passed all this stuff the day before. Here are a few, since I just can't help myself:
Can you spot the train in this next picture:
Talk about taking the scenic route.
Okay, that white dot above my lip is some sort of lighting thing, I didn't have food on my face. Just wanted to clear that up.
The train tracks:
Caw! Caw!
I obviously know nothing about birds, but this one was massive and very majestic.
We're now in Kaikoura and stopped on the side of the road to try and spot some seals. This is the side of the road:
Boneyard:
Aaron was actually walking ahead of me when he stopped all of a sudden and gasped because he basically stumbled upon a seal (they say you're not supposed to get too close because they can attack if they feel threatened and they're pretty fast) and had to back away quietly. It didn't seem to mind us one bit:
It was basking in the sun and slowly turning over and over to make sure it got an even tan. He was loving all the attention, totally putting on a show. Adorable! I want one!
There's a company in New Zealand that spray paints funny, random stuff on the vans they rent and throughout our drives we saw a few different ones. Here's the one we saw in Kaikoura:
Frickin fantastic! Who doesn't love Ron Burgundy?!
I saw one a few days later that read: "Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out." I sent it to my mother right away. Just cause it's random, doesn't make it untrue.
We drove through Kaikoura and passed Fyffe House:
It's the oldest house in Kaikoura (now a sort of museum) and the foundation is made of whale bone (I'm not sure if it's made entirely of whale bone, or if there are just a few ribs stuffed in there somewhere, but either way I've never heard of a house with a whale bone foundation).
This was right across the street:
In case I forgot to mention, Kaikoura is known as "one of the few places in the world home to such a variety of easily spottable wildlife." I just totally plagiarized from my guidebook because I was too lazy to make up my own words. Wow, a new low. Some examples of the "easily spottable wildlife" include: "whales, dolphins, NZ fur seals, penguins, shearwaters, petrels (okay wait, those are from Harry Potter, nice try) and wandering albatross." Yup, I just directly copied that out of my book too. Man, Sharmeela, get it together!
Kaikoura is known for crayfish, so of course we had to have us some. Unfortunately, it's very expensive. A single crayfish could cost $100 or more at one of the local restaurants. Fortunately for us, the Kaikoura Seafood BBQ roadside stand sells all kinds of seafood cheaper than the restaurants, since you're eating it in your car on the side of the road, and yup, you guessed it, they have crayfish!
You walk over to the cooler and pick your crayfish (the prices are on their bodies):
Of course, I grab the smallest one:
It said $76, but they do halves, so we only got a half ($38 NZD, which is really $25 USD).
They boil then grill it.
I also got an order of scallops:
So delicious!
I'm ready to see some more seals!
We stumbled upon another seal by accident! We didn't even notice until after we took this picture:
We spotted another one:
After stuffing our faces full of crayfish and finding some seals, we were ready to move on. Kaikoura, it's been great!
We drove for hours until we got to Christchurch. Christchurch is the second largest city on the South Island (besides Queenstown-our last stop) and we will be spending the next couple days here. It was nice to kiss Pooey goodbye and check into our hostel, where we had a private room with super comfy beds.
We showered, changed and decided to hit up a local pub for some beers. I found a place in my guidebook where they have tons of beer on tap, so we did a tasting:
They were all delicious, yet distinct. Yum!
We walked around and explored the city a bit:
We walked to this bar:
which was obviously closed, so we ended up going to a club down the street and danced the night away before crashing in our beautiful, soft beds.
You definitely don't want to miss seeing the rest of Christchurch because it's a completely unique, artistically creative place with buttloads of charm! (I probably should have said "boatloads" instead of "buttloads," huh? Way to class it up, Sharmeela.)
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