Hello to our loyal (or occasionally interested) blog followers, we hope all is well in your part of the world. We continue to plug along. We had a great Easter weekend in Kaikoura. Holidays are a big thing in this part of the world. Beth has a three week break from teaching (basically the week before Easter and the following two weeks). That doesn't mean she stops working, just that she has the opportunity to spend time on her research and gets a chance to breathe.
We drove up to Kaikoura, about a 2.5 hours drive north of us. Kaikoura is renowned as where the mountain meets the ocean and the last hour and a half of the drive is amazing as you go through the mountains and then come up the coast. As a drive, we actually encountered our first section of road resembling an American highway, two lanes with marked exits and off ramps. It lasted less than ten miles and then reverted back to the typical New Zealand highway, single lane each way with the occasional passing lane only for the major hills. Holiday traffic, trucks and horse trailers, hills and my self-imposed speed limits (or intolerance for those that drive well below it) are not conducive to enjoying a vacation. I’m afraid my efforts at patience and not reverting to “Dr Death” are still a work in progress. Sorry Beth.
As we headed out to sea there are lots of seals in close to the coast and then you don’t see anything but seabirds as you get further out; not to say the birds aren’t amazing. There are Wandering Albatross which have the largest wingspan of any bird. Our narrator explained that they get into the thermals and just glide. They have the ability to shut their brain down and “sleep” while flying. Nature’s auto-pilot.
Kaikoura is a tourist town for all levels of tourist. Backpackers, motor homes and hotels, everybody has a place to stay. The concept of backpacking is probably not something I want to be doing at this point in my life but is definitely a cool way to see the country on a budget. Charter buses bring loads of backpackers into the town and there are “lodges” that sleep from two to eight in a room, the bigger the room, the cheaper the rate. There are tons of fast food/fish and chip/burger places as well as bars and if you’re a twenty something, you have all the makings of a good time.
For the more budget minded families, lots of them rent camping/sleeper mini-vans for a week. There are parking lots on the beach as well as proper motor lodges where you can rent spaces. It's funny to see people getting dressed in their camper, windows full open, oblivious to the world outside (sometimes curtains are a good idea).
We stayed in a simple hotel up the road from the restaurant/bar strip of town. It was a five minute walk into town which after the first two passes was nice, but after that you get the feeling that it’s a nice place to visit, but probably a tough place to live. Having said that, it was a spectacular weekend.
Saturday morning we were signed up for a whale watch. There’s a company that has a fleet of five boats and they take you out on the water to see whales and assorted other wildlife. There is a check-in station in town and after a brief advisory, you bus out to the boat.
A major part of the advisory portion was that a “Motion” advisory was in place. In other words, failure to take proper medication would have dire consequences. While Beth and I were adequately prepared, there were a few Asian passengers who didn’t get that memo. Unfortunately one of them was a gentlemen seated directly behind me. It was amusing to hear our tour narrator talk about “sea legs” and what to do if you start to feel queasy until you realize that my Asian friend understood none of that.
The water was fairly bouncy going out and while it’s a fairly big boat, you’re moving quickly to get out the whales and it’s an even bigger ocean. 20 minutes into our two hour cruise I hear him wretch in my ear as he fills his bag and I’m greeted by the sweet smell of puke. Ugh.
Three miles out to sea is the continental shelf and the water turns from blue to black as the water’s depth goes from 20 meters to 400. You can’t help but think back to people sailing these waters to travel as opposed to flying today. I’m not a water guy, but I completely respect and appreciate the courage and adventure it took to get here 150 years ago. You realize you’re just a speck in the ocean.
We saw a sperm whale while we were out there and the locals know all the whales in the area by name. Down by New Zealand you only get male sperm whales and if I remember correctly, it’s because they’re bigger than the females and have more fat so they can weather the colder waters. The only known predator to sperm whales are killer whales (Orcas) and the particular male we saw was famous for having fended off some killer whales that were taking on another sperm whale. Sperm whales only come up for about 10 minutes to re-oxygenate then go down below. They don’t really do a lot at the surface, but there still pretty amazing doing nothing.
As we headed back to shore we stopped to see a herd of duskies (dolphins). On the entertainment spectrum, they’re show-stoppers. We saw a pack of probably 50 and they're non-stop. Synchronized swimming, back flips, front-flips, they’ve got it all going on. As was explained to us, when the dolphins jump out of the water and slam down sideways, it’s to disorient smaller fish in the area so the other dolphins can feed. Flipper needs to eat.
When we got back to port, we took a drive up the coast and there’s a cut out from the road where you can pull over and see a colony of seals. Straight down the sheer drop off there were probably another fifty seals sunning, pups playing in the rocks. Definitely not Ohio.
On the domestic front, we’re now a two car family. We bought another Yaris. Unfortunately on the current path we’re on, I coach two nights a week and then have games on Saturday which effectively leaves Beth home without a car. New Zealand has a version of e-bay called TradeMe. You can get everything on TradeMe. We found our house on TradeMe and now the car.
The car was a great deal and provided Beth with quite the adrenaline rush as she ended up making the winning bid as the auction ended since I had training and she had to make the decision as to whether to make what proved to be the last bid in a showdown with the only other bidder in the final seconds.
Lastly, I’m hoping I’m finally on the mend with my foot. I was able to get into a sports doctor and got a cortisone shot for my plantar faciatis. After an initial assessment, the crux was that I’m really tight (no kidding), I’m told that I have plantar faciatis (another thing I already knew), and that I had two treatment plans, shock wave therapy which consists of a weekly treatment, over five weeks and after three weeks they assess whether it’s working and it doesn’t always work, or the shot. I took the shot. I’m still tight and I’m probably going to need another appointment with a podiatrist to get orthodics (inserts for my shoes) as one shot is not going to fix 50 years of walking on my toes.
That’s it for this week. Life goes on and that’s a good thing…
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