Now, before you go getting yourself all excited, I will pre-warn you it did not exactly all go swimmingly, shall we say! Yes, we did go back to Kaikoura on a beautiful, calm, sunny day and in plenty of time to get an afternoon trip but it just so happened they were not doing any trips that day. Never mind, we thought, book a trip for the next day, at this the young girl on her desk pulled a strange face and said, "We are taking bookings but there is a south westerly blowing in, so it may be cancelled." We booked it anyway and as the day progressed the weather got worser and worser, for tea we had a fish supper which we sat in the car and ate at the seal colony. We were joined by a hungry seagull, who kept giving us the eye through the windscreen and in the distance on the rock, through the rain you may just see a seal.
We got up bright and breezy the next morning, it was a dull day, windy but dry and set off to the whale watching place. As we walked in there were lots of people waiting and on the notice board was a message saying they were waiting to see if the trip would go ahead. Eventually a woman came out, got the groups attention, told us it would be very choppy out at sea and said children under 6 would not be allowed to go or pregnant women, then left us to decide if we still wanted to go.
Well, we had made the effort and changed our plans to come back so decided to give it a go. Now, people who know me well, will know I get motion sickness but I have actually been not too bad lately and also they were selling anti sea sick pills which I decided to take. We got on the boat with a warning from the captain that if you suffer from sea sickness to sit at the back, but David was determined to sit at the front and said I would be alright. Well, he regretted that.
Not long after we set off it started, feeling hot, nauseous and then heuching for Britain, as they say. Now and again the boat would stop, so the captain could listen for whales with a special gadget, at these times we were all advised to get out in the fresh air, when the boat is moving you are kept indoors. This in itself was a struggle as the boat was rocking so much but I always did make the effort to go out.
We had been pre warned that before you are sick you usually feel hot, so to take off layers which I duly did, this though meant when I did venture outside I was freezing. So there I was, heuching, holding on to my sick bag, curled up in an upright foetal position and shivering away when the health and safety officer on board came up and told me " to hold onto the rail while I was being sick as there was a swell." Really, I never noticed!
We had also been told before we set off, to focus on a landmark or the horizon as this helps with motion sickness. I tried to do this, but the land I was trying to focus on kept disappearing, as the boat rocked.
Eventually, thank goodness a whale was spotted, so off we set. Yes, I did see it and it was nice to see, but because the sea was so choppy and only a little bit of the whale was above the surface of the water, very little was seen. The whale did dive though and I saw the tail come up. Sadly, my hands were full so I took no photos, David got some though.
I was so glad when we got back on dry land but it didn't stop there, lucky David had me heuching in the car too.
Our next stop was back at Momorangi Bay where we had started on the South Island in our little cabin. On the way there, we stopped off at Ohau Waterfall, our kayak leader had told us about it, it is a place where seal pups go to practise swimming in the winter months. Although we are here in their Summer months, we decided to walk up to the waterfall as we thought the fresh air and walk would do me good but also it was supposed to be a lovely walk anyway. Well, we were lucky there were three pups playing in the pool and another sleeping close by.
I still felt funny and very tired the next day so we stayed close to the camp. We walked up to the viewpoint which was lovely. David enjoyed the view!
The size some of the ferns grow to here is huge! Bigger than some of the trees.
On the walk we saw several traps, these were for possums, stoats and rats which are really wiping out the native bird populations. Apparently the only mammal indigenous to New Zealand is the bat.
We did make a short drive to Governor's Bay, yeh, you guessed it, there was a geocache there which David found. This is a lovely little bay though and actually has golden sand, many of the beaches on the South Island that we visited had beaches that resembled a gravel car park.
The beach had lots of mussels clinging to rocks.
In the evening we walked up the track at the back of the camp ground on the search for gloworms, we didn't see them on our first walk round but by the time we walked around it again it was darker and they were all twinkling way, was lovely to see.
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