Our Travel Blog: Kaikoura

Monday, February 24

We keep wondering why Frankie's new phone has not shipped yet, then we realized that it's still the weekend back home 😆

We woke up to a nice view of the sunrise from our hotel window:

Kaikoura is a small town on the east coast of the South Island, population 4000.

imagecredit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaikoura_location_on_New_Zealand.jpg

The name Kaikoura means "meal of crayfish". The town is known for its wildlife, especially ocean wildlife such as dolphins, fur seals, and its local sperm whale population.

What to do in Kaikoura? A Wildlife Kayaking Tour, of course! We met the tour company at 8 am, only a 6 minute walk from our hotel. Kaikoura Kayaks are the only kayak operators in New Zealand to hold a marine mammal permit to view whales.

They shuttled us to South Bay Reserve. There was a 45 minute briefing to go over safety (they advertise that they average about 3 capsizes a year) and to gear up. First water boots, then jacket, then kayak skirt, then life jacket...

Then we had to carry the 120 pound kayaks down to the water, it took 4 people per kayak. It was ouchy ouchy carrying it over the rough (volcanic) rock bed, and our guide did it in bare feet.

It was about 2 hours in an enclosed double kayak alongside our guide. These kayaks were ocean kayaks that sat in the water. There were 4 kayaks in our group.

We paddled and paddled and paddled and didn't seem to get anywhere, the bay was so big.

We finally got to see some dolphins jumping alongside us briefly.

About halfway, we both started feeling a bit queezy. Okay, ocean kayaking may NOT be for us!!! Paddling made it worse for Frankie, so the guide attached a tow rope from her kayak to our kayak. Then one of the other kayaks kept falling behind, so she attached a tow rope from our kayak to theirs. After awhile they complained so the guide had to release them.

We went back to the hotel and laid down for awhile after which we felt better. We found a supermarket where we got bananas and a chocolate bar for lunch. They had an area at the entrance where you could leave your dog:

In the afternoon, we hiked along the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway. The Walkway itself is 11.7 kms long, we did a section of it. We drove to Point Kean Lookout and hiked from there to South Bay and back, about 6.5 kms total.

Most of the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway goes alongside the road, but we found a great route that took us down to the water, thanks to Cat and Joe from WalkMyWorld:

imagecredit: https://www.walkmyworld.com/posts/kaikoura-peninsula-walkway

The walking down here was a bit rough over a rocky seabed. What a gorgeous view, and we did see some seals.

Here are some pics of the view:

At one point we had to climb a set of steep stairs to get to the cliff top trail:

Then we had to climb over a stile and walk through a pasture.

We made it all the way to South Bay hoping to see the breeding colony of Blue Penguins. Blue Penguins are the smallest penguin in the world at 25 cm tall and 2 pounds. They are slate blue with a white belly. They don't fly, but they do swim at 6 kph underwater, which means they can forage for food quite far from their colony.

imagecredit: https://www.kaikourawildlifecentre.org/kaikoura-penguins

Sadly, we only saw their breeding area, but since they are nocturnal, there was no sign of them:

We walked back all the way along the cliff top and it seemed to go by twice as fast. Altogether we were hiking for 3 and a half hours, NOT the 2 hours that Cat and Joe said it would take! And we didn't even take the side trail! They must be younger than us.

There were nice views from this trail as well:

On the way back through town, we stopped at the King Tide Eatery for a pretty decent supper. Order at the bar, eat, and go. Every restaurant we've been to in NZ has pay at the bar, which is great. No need to wait around after you are done eating.