puzzle_me

I woke up bright and early, excited to head out into the sounds in a kayak. I'd booked about a week in advance, with Sounds Wild. Even though their website says that all day trips have to have a minimum of 3 people to go, I was the only person on my tour. I'm not sure whether they bent the rules because I'd booked in advance, or whether they bent the rules because I'm a girl. Either way, I was thrilled to get a tour totally tailored around what I wanted to see. :)

My guide Cole, was an adorable Kiwi boy. We went out in a double kayak - I'd only ever paddled a single, but it didn't feel as different to paddle as I thought it would. I imagine that would not be the case if I'd been trying to paddle a double with an inexperienced kayaker. Heading out of the Picton harbour, we saw a mother dolphin and her baby. This was probably the same set I'd seen yesterday, from the ferry. We followed them for a bit, and were able to get pretty close. Since we were still in the harbour though, we couldn't linger because the water was a bit choppy and we were needing to cross the mouth of the harbour before a ferry came through.

Once we got out of the harbour, the water calmed down a lot. We paddled into a little bay where there was a family of fur seals napping on some rocks.

After checking out the seals, we drifted through a quiet and fairly undeveloped bay. Then we stopped at a tiny beach for tea and biscuits. Here's a picture I took looking out from the little beach.

The beach as seen from the water:

Looking out from the beach:

A picture Cole took of me on the beach:

Though it hardly seems possible, I think New Zealanders drink tea even more often than the British do. Cole had this little camp stove that looked as though it was specifically designed to make tea. Sitting on this little beach, that I'd arrived in via a double kayak, with this cute Kiwi boy making me tea all felt oddly romantic. I think I totally need to add, "will make me tea on a remote beach that we've kayaked to", to my list of (according to my sister) my already totally unreasonable romantic standards. And Cole, if you've managed to stumble across this, you're totally my imaginary boyfriend for making me tea on the beach. ;)

Back out on the water after the tea and biscuits, we passed a bunch of Spotted Shags. ('Shag' is the word they use for 'cormorant' over there.)

We kayaked on, hugging the shoreline, for about another hour, spotting more spotted shags, a gannet, and a stingray. Then we stopped for lunch on a much larger beach, where Cole again made tea and we ate sandwiches.

The beach, as seen from the water:

On the beach (in the shot with the kayak in it, Cole is the one sitting next to the kayak):

Here's a pretty sailboat we could see from the beach:

After lunch, we headed back along the sound, past more beautiful beaches and some huge mansions. After many attempts, I finally snapped a good picture of a Pied Shag, and shortly after that we passed my ideal getaway spot. Not a huge mansion, just this tiny little beach house nestled amongst fern trees at the edge of the shoreline. Heading back into the harbour, I spotted some Pied Oystercatchers.

The shag:

The beach house:

The Oystercatchers:

We got back to shore around 3:30 or 4 PM, and I hit the road almost immediately. I was driving to Kaikoura that evening - a 3 hour drive, and planned to stop for dinner along the way. I was planning to cook most of my dinners at the hostels I was staying in, but I had decided in advance that I would splurge on 1 or 2 really nice dinners. Since I would be driving through wine country right around dinner, I decided that was one place that it was probably worth it to splurge. The drive between Picton and Blenheim took me along a winding road through beautiful green hillsides. I was still getting used to the car (it didn't handle sharp turns well at all), and was still really nervous about driving on the left, so for that stretch of the drive I was the annoying driver who's going about 20 km below the speed limit. Once the road dropped down into wine country, the landscape started to look like the Sonoma Valley and the roads straigtened out considerably.

I stopped for dinner at Gibbs Vineyard Restaurant in Blenheim. The service was excellent - they brought me bread with olive oil and a crushed nut accompaniment for dipping right away. The bread was fantastic and crusty, and the crushed nut lent it a nice mellow flavor that I wouldn't have gotten with just the olive oil on it's own. My dinner entree was red snapper with green beans, tomatoes, mushrooms and couscous in a white-wine butter sauce with rosemary. It was soooo good.

For dessert I had warmed fresh figs with blue cheese in a port wine sauce. Also super good.

Dinner was so relaxing and enjoyable that I didn't realize how much time had past. By the time I got back in my car, it was already after 8 and darkness was fast approaching. The remaining drive to Kaikoura was kind of stressful - the road veered back to hug the coast where it was super twisty. Add to this the darkness, and the fact that it started pouring rain not too long after I got back on the road, and it made for slow going on my part. I didn't arrive in Kaikoura until about 10:30 at night. I had alerted the hostel I would be arriving after office hours, so they had given me a code to get in and left my key (with directions to my room) at the front desk. In Kaikoura, I stayed at The Dusky Lodge. It seemed like a nice enough hostel, but I didn't really spend much time awake there. I showered and went to bed as soon as I got there. They did have nice quilts, and I slept really well.

Next up - Christchurch
All of the pictures for day 4 are in this flickr set.