Travel Journal:

New Zealand - Heading to the South Side


Heading to the South Side 2006-11-15
 
wellington to kaikoura

I had a bit of a fitful night. I had sort of packed up and went to bed at 11 but I couldn't remember what Tina had told me about taking the ferry. I wasn't sure what bus I needed to take. I got up at 6:30 and got packed and dressed. Tina was going to show me where to go before she went to work.

It was a drizzly mist out but certainly not the gale force winds of tuesday. If they had been like that I would have worried about the ferry running at all. Anyway I said goodbye to Tina and thanked her for having me over. Then I waited for the shuttle bus.

The only other major ferry I've been on is the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and only with a car. So I was a bit surprised to see I got to check my bag before boarding. Inside it was quite fancy and I went up to the food court for some breakfast. I got a full cooked breakfast that was $12 and not that good but it was filling. From there I went to one of the rooms with reclining chairs and did a little knitting. After that I took a long nap and realized my neck pillow smells like bug spray. Then I did a little more knitting and saw that we had reached Queen Charlotte Sound. It was really pretty with blue water, forests to the edge, and a mist clinging to the tops of the peaks.

I headed up to the sun deck to get some air take some photos. There were some houses nestled into the hills that were obviously only reachable by boat. Now that's privacy! It wasn't long before we reached Picton. It took a little while to get off the boat and they made an announcement that the luggage would be delayed 15-20minutes due to a technical problem. As I was getting off I could see the "technical problem" was that the door was stuck halfway. A lot of people were worried about catching their train/bus but it was only 11:30 and those didn't leave until 1pm. I heard someone from the ferry company say that if it got close to 1 they would tell the train/bus people and ask them to wait.

I think I got my bag at 12:15 and went out to wait for my bus. I had wanted to take the Tranzscenic train but I waited until the night before to book and it was full. My bus was pretty empty, which was nice  since the Nelson bus that came before was packed to the ceiling. I managed to get the entire inner band of the hat knit. By that time we were in the Kaikoura region. Kaikoura comes from the Maori words "kai" meaning food and "koura" meaning crayfish.

The coast is gorgeous and rugged. In one section we saw dozens of seals laying out on the rocks. That was pretty nifty. The actually town of Kaikoura is mainly one beach road along which there are houses, hotels, backpacker lodges, shops and restaurants. It's called, appropriately, Beach Road. One interesting thing, at least to me, was the number of industrial or commercial businesses that were on beachfront property. There were gas stations, supermarkets, even some farm products stores. I think the railroad might run behind them so they don't have direct access, but even so I would think the view would command top dollar. I guess that is one of the differences between NZ and the US. Anywhere in the US oceanfront property is highly prized.

We got dropped off near the visitors center so I went to the i-site to get a room booked. I asked about getting a single room at a backpackers. My first choice, mainly due to the free internet, was entirely booked. I guess some of the backpacker buses must have beat us. The other two only had doubles which were more expensive. She finally found me a single at the Albatross for $48 so I took it. It was about a 8 minutes walk to the place. My room is pretty tiny with just a twin bed and side table and the place is nothing special.

After getting my room, I packed my pack with the remains of the lunch I bought at the ferry station and my camera. I put my flipflops on and headed towards the beach. As I approached I saw what I figured was a rock path along the top, but as I got there I realized then entire beach was grey pebbles! There were some large but mostly small smooth stones. Let me tell you it's not easy to walk on that, especially in flipflops! I decided to give it a try anyway. I was walking along where the tide was coming in when I saw some beautiful green stones. I thought they might be the greenstone that was used for a lot of jewelry. I was pretty sure Kaikoura isn't a reserve so I picked some up.   

I continued walking through town and went into the Paua shell factory store. What caught my eye in there was a book about how to make paua shell jewelery. I looked through it a bit and thought about buying a shell to try it but decided not to. I might go back though. I kept walking figuring I'd hit up the big grocery store for chocolate (hello, pms). It was much further away than I thought. Eventually I got some snacks and started walking back. Flipflops just aren't what I should be wearing for long walks. My right foot was really hurting but I made it back to my room. I popped on the internet for a bit ($2/20min) to try to check my email but the site is ridiculously slow and I could barely see the mail let alone open it.

I decided to spend a quiet night and get up early and do some roaming.
 
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