... a freakin' SPERM WHALE today. No shit! I was about 20 feet away from a SPERM WHALE!! It was killer. I got probably 50 pics, including 2 crummy pics of it breaching, and one really GREAT picture... etc.. It's going to be a crazy time here. And one thing we REALLY wanted to do, a sunrise hot air baloon ride, is totally out of the question. Bummer. We'll just have to come back I guess.. :-
... from Blenheim to Kaikoura today.. This was by FAR the most beautiful drive. The first part started like all the others, hills, sheep, vineyards, etc.. But then we started driving along the coast. It's really rocky and stark, and reminds me a little of Maine.. But we saw three really amazing things. We saw a lot of mountains with snow caps. I'll just never get tired of that. THEN, we saw this beautiful...
...for bus at 7.45am...thank god to be getting out of christchurch....had some breakfast at the hostel before we left and then on the road...i was knackered...just dozed on the bus ....travelling to kaikoura today....again the coastline here is lovely...abundant with wildlife - we spotted a number of seals and dolphins along the way in...then we seen one of the boats with dolphin swimming and there...
...the Chinese people. Where does this attitude come from? Is it economic nationalism? Is it the classic fallacy of conflating the rulers with the ruled? Or is it just racism wearing a peace sign? --- Kaikoura was excellent fun. I went on my first real wine tasting adventure up in Blenheim, and ended up spending far too much money. I bought three bottles in the end - a St Clair Sauvignon Blanc (which...
...be great! We then head to Wanaka and then on to Queenstown which promises a lot! New Zealand is really spectacualr. every where we stop nature offers up something new. On the first day we stopped at Kaikoura and walked to see a seal colony. They got so close, sometimes with out you even noticing. We were sat watching them and we heard a sneeze and it was a seal in the bush right behind us! It was...
...have to anyway. We'll see how that goes. Especially if I take a semester off. But that's another story. A bunch of people from campus (all international, save 2 1/2 Kiwis) went on a bus trip up to Kaikoura this weekend (a beach town/peninsula on the north coast; think Capitola for backpackers, in a way). Super awesome and pretty damn hot. It's amazing how many bits of CA exist in NZ, at least in...
Yesterday morning we woke to the sound of rain pouring on the roof of our van so we slept in. The surf had dropped off overnight and it was choppy and uninviting so when we finally got up we tidied ourselves...ice for their troubles... This morning we're trying to put off setting a date to return to Sydney and thinking about where we're going to go to have lunch. I think Cruzies is closed on the weekend
We've had lots of good surf for the past three days. Always 3-5ft, sometimes choppy, sometimes clean and offshore, mostly at Meatworks, once at Fun Reefs Graveyards. We haven't had that much surf for a while so we're a bit sore and tired. It's all good. Edd getting a nice wave at Meatworks Graveyards
The surf wasn't good this morning so we drove to Karamea, the end of the road at the north end of the West Coast. It was a rainy, dreary day and we didn't find anything to keep us there so we drove back down to Westport for lunch before traveling over the Lewis Pass to Kaikoura.
