Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the mrlukeniktravels blog. It is already Monday again and time to commit some thoughts to paper (or in this case, keyboard). This week I am in the beautiful town of Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand. I am just over half way between Picton, at the top of the South Island, and Christchurch. The scenery around me is beginning to get mountainous, the ridges of the Kaikoura Mountains are visible out the window of my ‘office’. Upon the upper slopes lies the very last remnants of last winter’s snow. The weather is breezy but lots of sunshine- in fact Kaikoura enjoys over 2,000 hours per year. Not bad!
The town of Kaikoura is known for two things, other than sunshine, whales and crayfish. The topography of the ocean floor surrounding the peninsular ensure a regular supply of krill: food for the whales and much else besides. The whales travel up and down the east coast of New Zealand between their feeding grounds around Antarctica and calving grounds further north. I hope to get out tomorrow to see some whales, so I shall report back on that with next week’s blog. There are also plenty of dolphins, seals and other fauna in the waters just off the beach. This time of year seals are breeding so there are colonies all along the coast. The New Zealand Fur Seal is the most common and, despite not being friendly, quite cute.
The Kōura (crayfish) of the area give the town its name from a Maori legend of an explorer who stopped in the bay to cook crayfish. The local ocean lends itself as habitat for these creatures, some of whose larvae end up growing up over in South Australia. I am told that they are delicious to eat, unfortunately, I am unable to savour them. All manner of mussels, clams and abalone are also noted for their quality here. Again, not being able to eat crustaceans and molluscs is not helping me here! The crayfish are important for maintaining the ecological balance by preventing the abalone from taking over the rocky reefs.
Since leaving the vineyards of Blenheim I have been spending a good amount of time planning ahead, mainly for a road trip beginning next month. Once behind the wheel of a car I plan to do a roughly circular route around the bottom of the South Island. Having a car means greater flexibility and, where there is not much public transport, an ability to move around. This area of New Zealand has lots of national parks, mountains (including Mt. Cook) and lakes to enjoy. Throw in some glaciers and that sounds like a lot! It will be the last stage of my time in New Zealand before heading to pastures new. Using my usual dual resource of guide books and the Internet it is quite easy to build a rough itinerary. Beginning and ending in Christchurch, I hope to get in some fresh air and plenty of hiking. Perhaps even a skydive…who knows!?
This week will be my final trip on an Intercity bus which is how I have travelled thus far. New Zealand being the size it is there were no epic 20-hours-plus journeys like in Canada. The scheduled services almost always arrive on time and are a great way to get around the country. Certainly for the North Island, where there is more population, the bus worked well. For the more sparsely populated South Island, and particularly the west coast, having a car is much easier. I hope to find journey companions over there to help share fuel and prevent boredom on trips (if not there is Spotify Premium). Funnily enough, having a car makes someone suddenly more popular!
That is about all for this week’s update from Kaikoura. Next week I shall be in town again, this time Christchurch. To get regular updates on the go there is my Twitter account @mrlukeniktravel. For photos and hopefully, if I can get it working, stories there is my Instagram account @mrlukeniktravels. From now until next time, as usual, stay safe and travel on!
