Here is a short video that shows the beautiful mountains my wife and I had to drive over outside of New Zealand’s South Island city of Kaikoura:
Next Posting: Hamner Springs to the Wild West Coast
Prior Posting: From Kaikoura to Hamner Springs
Tag Archive for 'Kaikoura'
The final night my wife and I spent on New Zealand’s Kaikoura Peninsula in our campervan proved to be quite cold and we really wished the campervan had a heater in it. So far we were not having the type of luck in regards to the weather on the South Island that we had experienced on the North Island. Our bad luck with the weather would continue as the next morning we woke up to cloudy and rainy skies:
My wife and I drove our campervan over to the Whale Watch Kaikoura headquarters and once again we were informed that the morning tours had been canceled due to the weather and that we should return around lunch time to get an update if any tours would be able to run in the afternoon. So since we had to waste some time again in the morning we decided to head back over to the end of the peninsula and check out the sea lions again.
At the end of the peninsula we could not spot any of sea lions near the shore so we decided to take a walk on a trail that begins at the parking lot near the sea lion colony since the rain had stopped. The trail climbed up some stairs to the top of a hill where we had a great look at an old Maori Pa:
Pa are terraced fortresses that the indigenous Maori people built to defend their home territories. This Pa was used as a defensive base for the Maori that once lived on this peninsula that has since been long abandoned. We continued our walk along the trail as it hugged along the high cliffs that compose this peninsula:
The middle of the peninsula is basically just a few rolling hills and a lot of grassland used for grazing sheep:
We did not have a chance to continue our hike much further because the rain once again started coming down in buckets. We decided to turn around and head back for our campervan. We waited in our campervan for the rain to let up since we had no where else to go because we had to wait to go back to the Whale Watch headquarters to see if there was any chance of the tours beginning again that afternoon.
The rain eventually stopped again and my wife and I then began to walk along the waterfront and we spotted our first and only sea lion that day that had come up to the shore despite the rain:
Soon after spotting the sea lion we had to head back into town to check on our whale watching tour. Once we got to the Whale Watch headquarters we were informed the tours had once again been canceled and would probably be canceled the next day as well because of the poor weather. My wife and I decided to forget the tour and continue on to our next destination. The Whale Watch people were very understanding and refunded in full our reservation money.
From Kaikoura our next destination was the wild west coast of New Zealand. To get there though we had to cross over the imposing peaks of the Southern New Zealand Alps:
We drove our campervan down a lonely country road towards the city of Hamner Springs that sits in the middle of the Southern Alps. The scenery between Kaikoura and Hamner Springs was nothing but pastoral farming land backdropped by imposing peaks that made an appearance occasionally from the clouds:
The vast majority of the pastoral land we saw was filled with sheep:
Though Australia is home to more sheep then New Zealand, the Kiwis however have the highest per capita percentage of sheep in the world and anyone visiting New Zealand will quickly see why because there is sheep on just about every piece of pastoral land:
As we continued down the road the mountains came closer and closer and we began our ascent up the mountains:
While ascending the mountains my wife and I were just spellbound by the beauty of this river that flowed through the mountains and was framed by the yellow gorse weeds:
Soon after taking this picture the massive down pour you can see in the distance reached our campervan and any picture taking became impossible. We continued down the road in the driving rain that eventually turned into light snow as we neared Hamner Springs. It was nearly dark when we reached the caravan park in Hamner Springs. There was plenty of spots available at the park and we settled in for the night. Hamner Springs is located high up in the mountains and that night would easily prove to be the coldest one we spent during our entire time in New Zealand.
Next Posting: Video of the Mountains Near Kaikoura
Prior Posting: Video of Kaikoura’s Sea Lions
I may not have been able to go whale watching by boat while visiting Kaikoura but I wish I would have done this instead:
Here is a video of a couple of sea lions that call New Zealand’s Kaikoura peninsula home:
If you have ever wondered if sea lions fart, well here is your answer:
Next Posting: From Kaikoura to Hamner Springs
Prior Posting: The Kaikoura Peninsula
After my wife and I completed our drive from Christchurch to Kaikoura in our rented campervan, we pulled into the first of our eventual many caravan parks we would stay at during our tour around New Zealand’s South Island. The caravan park was located just off the scenic Kaikoura Peninsula:
The small village of Kaikoura (Pop: 3,621) is located on a relatively flat peninsula of land that extends out into the ocean and is backdropped by large and dramatic snow capped peaks:
For someone originally from Colorado, it sure was nice to see such large snow capped mountains that cannot be found in Australia, though Mt. Feathertop in Northeat Victoria and the Snow Mountains of New South Wales do a decent impersonation of the much higher and impressive peaks of Colorado and New Zealand.
It was late November when we visited New Zealand and that night sleeping in our campervan was actually a little cold. For those that don’t know late November in the Southern Hemisphere would be late Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. During our stay on the North Island the weather was mostly beautiful and warm with the only coldness I felt was when I hiked through sometimes freezing temperatures in Tongariro National Park.
The next morning we woke up and headed over to Whale Watch Kaikoura, which as the name of the company suggests, is a company that launches whale watching tours off the coast of Kaikoura:
Kaikoura is famous in New Zealand for the abundance of whales that flock around the peninsula. The Kaikoura peninsula that extends out into the ocean is surrounded by extremely deep water. Here is a nice picture of the peninsula from the Wings Over Whales website:
Less then a mile from the peninsula’s coast is what scientists call the Kaikoura Canyon which is a massive geologic complex with trenches that plunge to depths of 22,000 feet (6,705 meters):
This geologic complex is popular with scientist because it is rich with sea life and one of the few places in the world where scientists actively search to film giant squids that live in the canyon. The sea life of this canyon was well known even before scientists discovered it because the original inhabitants of the peninsula, the Maori, named the peninsula Kaikoura, which in the local dialect means “feast of crayfish” because of the large catches of seafood they would harvest from the peninsula’s surrounding waters.
However, with the arrival of the Europeans the area became popular with whalers that set up a whaling station on the peninsula:
Remains of the whaling station along with a historic home known as the Fyfe House, from the whaling days gone by can still be seen today on the peninsula:
Whales continue to be a big part of the local economy today, but now it is now for hunting them but instead helping tourists to see them. Unfortunately for my wife and I we would not have the opportunity to get out on the ocean and see Kaikoura’s famous whales ourselves because Whale Watch had suspended its tours due to winds that were causing high waves. It was windy out but the weather appeared to be pretty nice overall. However, I guess out in the deeper water where the whales were located the waves must have been pretty high for them to suspend the tours. They told us to check in later in the afternoon to see if the weather improves.
So my wife and decided to spend the morning walking up and down the sea shore of Kaikoura:
Along the beach it wasn’t uncommon to see fishermen looking to catch some of Kaikoura’s abundant seafood themselves:
After walking up and down the beach we decided to check out the downtown area of the city next. The city of Kaikoura is very small, a bit uninspiring, and totally focused on catering to tourists. There is a number of hotels and hostels in the town along with all the nice little quaint tourist stores that sell plenty of whale and New Zealand related items:
Truthfully there isn’t a whole lot to see in the town and the real attractions of Kaikoura is the wildlife that surrounds the peninsula. A great place to see this wildlife is to drive to the far tip of the peninsula where a large sea lion colony lives. The tip of the peninsula is extremely rocky and the type of terrain sea lions like to live on:
We walked out on the rocks in search of the sea lions and along the way we had the opportunity to see birds that were poking around the pools of water probably looking for fish to eat:
We did eventually find what we were looking for out on the rocks and that was the sea lion colony. If you look closely, in the below photograph you can see the black shapes of sea lions both in the foreground and background:
On some of the outlying rocks where the majority of the sea lions were located, we could actually see divers swimming out there to see the sea lions. My wife and I were not about to do that when we could just do some rock scrambling and get near some of the sea lions that were located on the more inland rocks:
We approached this sea lion and it seemed like he actually liked having his picture taken. Every time I would pull up my camera he would strike a pose:
This sea lion was really tame and soon enough more and more tourists came over to where we were at to take pictures of this sea lion and he seemed to enjoy every minute of it:
This sea lion wasn’t alone though. He had a female sea lion that was dosing near him:
We eventually had a group of probably around 30 tourists now mobbed around the sea lions which of course meant plenty of noise which didn’t seem to go over well with the female sea lion who woke up and gave the crowd an angry look:
After giving the crowd an angry look, the female sea lion then began to walk out back into the ocean and even took a big stinky fart to let us know what she thought of us tourists spoiling her beauty sleep:
She was eventually out to sea and gone:
However, her male friend had no intentions of joining her. The male sea lion was continuing to have a ball posing for photographs for the increasingly bigger and bigger mob of tourists:
After checking out the sea lions, my wife and I then drove back to Kaikoura to see if the whale watching tours had restarted. Unbelievabley despite what appeared to be nice weather, all the whale watching tours were cancelled for the entire day because of the wind. It was extremely dissapointing, but the Whale Watch Kaikoura folks told us to come back tommorow morning and hopefully the weather would improve.
We hoped it would because we were really looking forward to the whale watching tour.
Next Posting: Kaikoura’s Sea Lions
Prior Posting: Video of the Kaikoura Peninsula
Here is a short video clip of the Kaikoura peninsula from my trip to New Zealand’s South Island :
Next Posting: The Kaikoura Peninsula
Prior Posting: North to Kaikoura
The drive north from Christchurch to Kaikoura on the first leg of our journey around New Zealand’s South Island was actually quite plain with nothing but rolling green fields of cows:
and even more sheep:
The South Island was actually reminding me of Victoria back in Australia with its rolling green fields of agricultural land until the single lane highway we were following to Kaikoura headed directly for these large mountains covered in brilliant yellow flowers:
I have no idea what these flowers were but as we drove through these mountains it was incredible how the mountains were absolutely covered with this flower:
The main single lane highway between Christchurch and Kaikoura twists and turns through these quite scenic mountains:
I don’t know for sure it appears these mountains have been heavily logged and turned into grazing land which has allowed this yellow flower to flourish:
I think the yellow flower is actually a weed called a gorse which is a foreign species to New Zealand that is proving difficult to eradicate. As we began to descend down the mountain range towards the sea shore the yellow flower was suddenly gone and replace with fantastic green scenery:
There was still plenty of grazing land but this time instead of sheep and cows we saw lots of deer farms:
The road quickly descended down the mountains and before we knew it we had reached the sea shore:
The seashore did not have any real beaches and was really quite rocky in some places:
These rocks were quite popular with the local birds though:
Looking towards the south back towards the range of mountains I had crossed was really quite scenic with the rolling hills descending into the border ocean waves:
As we continued driving down the coast we soon could see a peninsula of land sticking out towards the ocean in the distance:
It is on this peninsula that our destination the city of Kaikoura awaited.
Next Posting: The Kaikoura Peninsula
Previous Posting: Exploring New Zealand’s South Island
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