Day 45
This morning we said goodbye to Australia and caught a flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. We had so much fun in Australia and are already thinking about coming back to see more within the next 5 years. We love a plan!
Despite having an early flight, our room was ready when got to our hotel, Chateau in the Park. We spent some time in the hotel relaxing and catching up on the blog and our laundry! Chateau in the Park is actually a Doubletree hotel, and it probably had the nicest grounds of any of this brand we’ve ever experienced. We had a balcony that overlooked the pool and the garden with an amazing number and variety of flowering plants.
That evening, we enjoyed a drink in the garden prior to heading out to dinner. We walked though Hagley Park, which has 400 acres of wide-open areas. Within the park was the meandering Avon river, mature trees, along with an 18 hole golf course (actually, two flag sticks on each of the nine greens). There were also jogging tracks, bike lanes, and picnic spots. The park hosts some of the city’s largest concerts and festivals. It was a lovely a stroll.
Once on the main street, we came to the Bridge of Remembrance, which is dedicated to those who died in World War I, and serves as a memorial for those who participated in the two World Wars.
We found a nice restaurant and enjoyed some tapas for dinner. The most memorable part of the dinner was our waiter, Jupiter, who was from Oregon and taking a gap year prior to college. He’s actually in New Zealand to improve his rugby skills, as he’ll be playing next year for Central Washington University (currently seeded #3 in the NCAA Division 1 Rugby Playoffs). He told us that by completing a short form and submitting $20, he received a work visa for a year. We subsequently met other Americans working in restaurants doing the same thing.
Day 46
On Saturday morning, we boarded the TranzAlpine Scenic Train in Christchurch, traveling 139 miles coast-to-coast through the ‘Great Divide’ and the mountains that partition New Zealand’s South Island to the town of Greymouth.
We enjoyed a plethora of fine dining as we traveled through some breathtaking landscape. Our hostess, Jolie, was the sweetest and happiest young lady, who we thoroughly enjoyed talking to during our journey.
Unfortunately, we didn’t capture our first course. It was mixed berry compote with Greek yogurt & granola. There was also a banana and strawberry mini loaf.
The train had an open air observation car that you could go to for better viewing. This allowed us to take better pictures without the glare from the glass. It’s so hard to truly capture the beauty of our journey, but here are a few attempts. The Waimakariri River is a “Braided River”, which only occurs in a few places on earth, including Alaska and the Himalayas. It is considered “braided” because the flow of the river is always shifting through the gravel river bed, rather than being a consistent path. The “veins” of water loop back and forth, looking a bit like braided hair or rope. Hopefully, the first picture below captures some of the phenomenon.
We passed through the small town of Cass, which has only one permanent resident, named Barrie, who was a long-time KiwiRail employee. He comes out every day to wave to the train and has lived in Cass for over 25 years (now in his 80’s). If he doesn’t show for more than one train passing through, the crews get concerned and have someone check on him.
We stopped at Greymouth for an hour and walked around. They had a nice boardwalk along the river. This was a coal mining town, and there was a memorial for the fallen miners over the last 150 years. It was a long list of people.
Back on board, we headed back to Christchurch. We saw a beautiful rainbow along the way, which was probably the most complete rainbow arc either of us had ever seen. Pat was sure there would be a pot o’ gold at the end of this one – but which side? As the sun went down, we arrived at Christchurch. We had a quick bite to eat at the hotel restaurant, and we were done for the night.
Day 47
This morning we went to church at St. Theresa. Based on some cues we picked up, it seems this was a recently consolidated church of two (and possibly three) congregations. Unlike some of the cathedrals we’ve visited, this was a modest neighborhood church, which we selected based on Mass time and proximity, allowing us to walk. They were doing a fundraiser for a youth group after Mass, selling pork sausages (brats), which they were grilling during Mass, and we got to share in the aroma drifting in.
We then decided to explore Christchurch on their Hop-on, Hop-off tram. It does a loop of the Town Centre in 50 minutes, covering 18 stops. The driver provided live commentary, which was informative and interesting. We did about half the loop before hopping off to …
… go “punting” on the Avon River. A “punt” is a shallow-bottom boat originally used to transport cargo in shallow rivers and canals. They’re the same type of boats you can find in Oxford and Cambridge in England. While similar to the gondolas of Venice, key differences are the shallow hull and the “pilot” uses his pole against the river bed to propel the punt, whereas the gondolier paddles the gondola in the deeper canals of Venice.
After our 30 minute punting adventure, we returned to the Hop-On, Hop-off Tram and completed the circuit. We grabbed a delicious dinner of perfectly cooked lamb lollipops and lamb ragu gnocchi at Delilah’s, a restaurant across from the river in a trendy part of town.
Day 48
This morning we got back on the train in Christchurch and headed for Kaikoura (kie – ryhmes with sky – cur-ah), a short run of about 2.5 hours. “Kai” means food and “koura” means crayfish. We enjoyed great scenery along the east coast of New Zealand.
We arrived at our hotel, The Kaikoura Boutique Hotel, well before scheduled check-in; however the day staff, Vanessa, said our room was ready, and we could drop our bags in our room. The room was large with a very nice balcony overlooking the bay. We’d get to enjoy this quite a bit during our short stay in Kaikoura.
We walked along the shore to the Pier Hotel, which both our driver from the train station and Vanessa recommended for lunch. Along the way, we passed multiple hotels, guest houses, B&B’s, and cottages; although it was quite obvious we were in “low season”. After our 20 minute walk, we had a nice lunch sitting outside, looking back towards Kaikoura across the bay.
We decided to keep walking past our hotel on the return trip to do some shopping in the little town. Cheryl was hopeful to find some merino wool sweaters. After venturing into six or seven stores, we were successful and Cheryl was able to find a nice seafoam full zip jacket, plus a navy blue zip vest (or “half sweater” as her father calls them). Maybe Cheryl is becoming a shopper after all this time?
We returned to our hotel and decided to enjoy some time on our balcony with Champagne. We were pleasantly surprised to see the tiny bar in the hotel had a bottle of Taittinger and some nice glasses. With ice bucket in hand, we headed to our balcony to enjoy the warm weather and nice view from our balcony. Although the sun sets behind us, the view was still rather nice, with colors changing on the water, mountains, and sky.
For dinner, we decided to go “casual” and walked to King Tide about 10 minutes down the Esplanade. We both had their burgers, which were quite good. After a day of travel, walking, shopping, and drinking, we were tired, so we were “lights out” by 9:30 pm. Tomorrow would be an early day for whale watching.
Day 49
The sunrise was magnificent this morning.
We watched the weather forecast closely yesterday, because our scheduled whale watching was weather-dependent. Fortunately, as we arrived the skies were blue with some clouds and a double rainbow. We got the green light to go out; however the winds were going to pick up and rain was coming, so we were warned that the size of the waves could cause sea sickness and the next tour was in danger of being canceled.
We got the Captain’s VIP tour and ended up being the only ones on it. It allowed us to be up with the Captain, plus Robbie, the look-out, and have a private viewing deck up front. As soon as we boarded, we were informed that a sperm whale had been spotted close to shore so we were off in pursuit. We headed out into the ocean and stopped once to listen for the click that the whale gives off. Within minutes we had the sperm whale, Manu, spouting off the side of the boat. Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales weighing close to 100,000 pounds and up to 52 feet long. They have a large head containing a fluid-filled organ weighing 5,000 pounds. Manu has been spotted in Kaikoura since the early 1990s. He is identifiable by his wrinkly skin and the shape of his tail. Manu was in view, spouting every 15 seconds, for about 10 minutes. They very accurately told us to get ready & at the second warning, Manu dove down to go hunt. Sperm whales are known for their deep dives, routinely reaching depths of 3200 to 6500 feet, and staying underwater for up to 60 minutes. In the depths, sperm whales can battle giant squids, and Robbie showed us some pictures of other whales in the area that had battle scars on their bodies.
We then headed to calmer waters looking for dolphin pods. We located a couple pods of 4-6 dolphins. More and more dolphins joined their friends, interacting with each other and the boat. We stayed in the area for a long time and we saw over a hundred dolphins swimming, playing and jumping in the air. We’ve seen dolphins before, but never anything like this!
An experience that you can do in Kaikoura (which we did not) is an open-water swim with these dolphins. While we were observing the dolphins frolicking, there were two 40 foot catamarans “launching” swimmers in wetsuits, snorkels, and fins off the back to swim with the dolphins. That must have been an amazing experience. Maybe next time …
The wind picked up, and we headed back to shore. We heard the next boat was canceled unfortunately for the 10:30 group.
We walked into town and had some brunch at Flo & Co. Then we were off to the Kaikoura Museum, which tells the stories of Kaikoura’s natural, social,and cultural journeys.
There was a significant amount of space dedicated to surfing, as this area is very popular for the activity. There was also good coverage of the recent earthquake that hit in 2016. It caused significant damage to buildings and infrastructure but luckily no fatalities.
After just seeing the dolphins, we learned that dolphin babies are born “tail first” so that they don’t drown. As the baby exits the birth canal, the mother will give a violent thrash to break the umbilical cord and then help the baby to the surface to breathe. Birthing mothers are typically accompanied by another female (a “mid-wife”), who will assist in the birth, including pulling on the tail of the new born if it is having trouble exiting the birth canal, as well as assisting in getting the baby to the surface for the first breaths. Fascinating!
We headed back to our hotel for some down time and for to Pat watch the NCAA finals. Eventually, we ended up back out on the balcony watching the waves come in. Throughout this trip, we have been surrounded by water. We’re going to miss it when we head home!
For dinner, we walked about 5 minutes down the Esplanade to Hiku Hotel and Restaurant. It was surprisingly crowded, since we had not seen very many people in the town and all of the hotels had vacancy signs posted. The hotel looked very nice: modern and upscale. We both enjoyed fish, another thing we are going to miss when we get home. The fresh seafood has been amazing.
Tomorrow will be a travel day, which will include leaving the South Island via ferry for Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. We’ll provide our next update of the North Island after we board the cruise in a few days.
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