After a very chilly first night in a below par hostel (it's colder inside than out, the room is very cramped & one of my roommates is definitely 50+ and currently doing some knitting...) I headed straight for the info centre to get my whale watching and dolphin swim booked, only to find that everything had been cancelled because the wind had turned the sea into a churning body of froth and mighty waves. However, despite the ferocious gale force winds the skies were blue and the sun was shining, so I took myself on the Peninsula Walk and spent the next 3.5 hours happily strolling by the sea, struggling to stay upright on the blustery cliff tops and being thoroughly entertained by playful seal pups.
With coast on one side and snowy mountaintops on the other, the track is a great place to immerse yourself in a delicious fusion of scenic scapes:
These little cuties definitely weren't shy - their curiosity brought them within centimetres of us
I was taking a photo of a distant sea lion in the ocean when I felt something nudge my leg. At first I thought it was an unruly child wielding a camera - until I heard giggling behind me. I whipped around, looked down and saw this critter sniffing my jeans before waddling off to the beach. My closest encounter with a seal yet!
Unfortunately, both the whale watching and dolphin swimming were cancelled the next day and the following day wasn't looking too good either. Rather than hang around and wait for these highly weather-dependent activities to go ahead, I decided to cancel my last night here and move on. I had originally wanted to go to Abel Tasman National Park, but unless you have a car it's a real pain and quite expensive to get to, so in the end I booked a bus to Picton. This is where you catch the ferry across to the North Island but it also has some nice walks and dolphin swimming...so fingers crossed for that. I can't wait to leave Kaikoura - it's bloody freezing, the hostel isn't brilliant and it's been a bit of a fail as far as marine life is concerned. Onwards and upwards!
