Kaikoura

The tourist bustle had already started at Kaikoura, as overseas backpackers and kiwi holiday makers filled the streets of this quaint coastal village, reknowned as a whale and dolphin watching spot and home to seal and seabird colonies.

Our first day there was warm and sunny and we did a short walk across the pastures and along the limestone cliffs of the Kaikoura Peninsula, returning along the stony shore line and rock platforms past silver gull rookeries and fur seal haul-out areas.

No wonder the cheese tastes so good

This is a place of stark physical beauty and its setting, looking back across the green ocean waters to the magnificent snowy tops of the Seaward Kaikoura Range, is quite unique.

From the cliffs we watched the tourist boats and even a helicopter out to sea searching for elusive whales; the spouting of a sperm whale triggering a convergence of floating and flying "whale-watchers" to one small spot of the ocean. It was difficult to say which was more interesting, watching whales or watching whale-watchers. Down below another group of tourists were "swimming with seals", well 8 tourists were swimming with one seal - who was amusing who?

The walk gave us a taste of this beautiful and stark coastline, but our original plans for a 3-day walk a bit further south were dashed by two days of gale-force winds, rain and snow - we promised to return and headed inland.

Rainbow over Kaikoura

A fine, though cool. day followed the two days of stormy weather and we did a short walk up to Conical Hill, providing views over the broad Hanmer Basin, and down through the newer plantation forests and the century old Hanmer Forest.

A soak in the hot springs, now a modern multi-pool thermal complex, seemed in order at the end of the walk, but, with school holidays well underway, the pools were full of holidaying kiwis, old and young. Even the malodorous sulphur pools were packed.

We soaked in the warm sulphurous water for short time, but it all seemed too much like having a bath with a crowd of strangers. After a few lengths of the normal lap pool, we left.

It was a good place to spend the last few days before Christmas and gave us an opportunity to "suss" out the Banks Peninsula Track, a private walkway that has become very popular, and catch up with an old friend, John, a kiwi who returned home to live here after a working life in Australia. Looking out from the deck of his house over the beautiful clear light of Akaroa Harbour, after a delicious lunch of pan-fried sole, paua and a fine Marlborough riesling, we could understand why.

View of Akaroa Harbour from John's deck

Apart from investigating the town itself, we did a short walk along the shore of Pigeon Bay, a deep volcanic inlet on the north side of the peninsula. Below us a boatload of tourists cruised slowly up and down looking for Hector's dolphins, the world's smallest dolphin species, but Hector and his mates did not want to be found.

We ate lunch at the mouth of the inlet, watching a large thunderhead cloud well up over Christchurch. Behind us the sky had also begun to darken and thunder rolled distantly across the hills - it was definitely time to return. We beat the rain by the a few minutes, and as we drove back across the volcanic hills, water poured down the road past deep mounds of hail. The New Zealand weather was up to its usual tricks.