Kaikoura Seal Colony

I am going to be using the words - amazing, astounding and beautiful a lot for a while. 

The south island of New Zealand has some of the best natural features of anywhere in the globe in an extremely compact space. Fjordlands? Forget Norway, head for Te Anau. Glaciers? Go to Fox or Franz Josef. Outstanding Rock Formations - go to Punakaiki. 

Wild colonies of seals by the roadside? Kaikouri is you destination!

This was a great surprise for us, one of the things we hadn't researched and had the fortune to stop at. We were following the ocean road on the East Coast and simply stopped at a lookout for a break and a view. 

We got out of the car, looked over the water and said... hey... there's a seal out there... and another one... and another!! Then we realised what we were looking at and went a little crazy watching the antics of this purely wild creature so close by.

They were noisy, and they stank, and they frolicked in the rock pools with every wave that came in. Amazing!

 

 

 

 

Briefly in Blenheim

On our way down to the southern end of New Zealand, we had a short stop at Blenheim.

We saw a little bit of the local experience, with a trip into the hills and seeing the houses there, then a drive out along past some of the wineries, past a gorgeous Cob House, and then to Pollard Park.

Pollard Park was a lovely stop, with a fantastic playground for the kids to enjoy, some beautiful flowers, and the base camp of the ducks of the world. There was more to see, but as this was a brief stop we didn't get to see much more.

A lovely place, where we actually stayed overnight on our way back North, before getting on the Ferry again :)

 

 

And below is one of the macro's I took while here :)


Extension by =KarenDFrancis on deviantART

Interislander Ferry

Ok, this is one cool boat!
We took a different ferry each way, and the first one we rode was 10 storeys high! Inside was movie cinemas, a 2 storey kids play area, multiple places to get food and drinks, you could get wi-fi and hire a cabin. This also takes cars in it's belly, but over 2 storeys - and there was an entire row over motorhomes... on the way back was a few rows on trains!

Seeing as we got an early trip over, we hired a cabin for people to rest in. Rob and Daniel spent time in there and the rest of us went upstairs and downstairs all over the boat.

I didn't realise just how close the North and South islands were to each other. My last major crossing like this was heading to Tasmania from Melbourne - which is around 500km and 10 hours, this is only around 100km and 3 hours.

However, you pretty much leave land sight on the North Island to see land on the south, it's not just going on a southern journey, it's also going east to get to the next port. The actual distance between wellington and Picton is 92 kilometres but the shortest distance between the 2 islands is 24 kilometres.

On the way down, we hoped to see dolphins, and when the captain called it we were too busy racing around the ship to see them... good thing we had another crossing to do.

Wellington

We started our trip with a beautiful sunny day - rare and well worth taking advantage of. We went to the waterfront, around Te Papa Museum and had some great time out exploring the city.

The Museum was amazing the displays were world class and fascinating. We also couldn't believe it was free entry!

One of the best displays was a looped video showing the molten core of the earth, and then having some rocks for you to lift, each one heavier and heavier, showing how it would be towards the centre of the earth. The heaviest was was almost impossible to lift, gave us a real concept of how the earth really is. Jono also loved the large map of New Zealand, he walked over the towns I named saying "Stomp Wellington"... on so on.

We also saw a street performer, juggling basketballs on a unicycle outside, which was unique in it's own way. The day was so nice that people were jumping into the harbour :)