Day 12 & 13 - Nelson and Surroundings, Over and Underground

Over the last two days we left Kaikoura and drove the roughly 3 hours up the coast to Nelson.

We checked out the city center, including the shop of Jens Hanssen who made the rings for the Lord Of The Rings movies. They used a variety of models for shooting, varying in size for various angles and perspectives. The largest model is in the shop and is shown on request (it's about 15cm in diameter):

For dinner we went to an Italian place called "When In Rome". The food was delicious, green mussels in tomato sauce as starters and then Simone had a pizza and I had homemade spaghetti with prosciutto and different kinds of mushrooms. We left full and satisfied.

We had nothing prebooked for today, so when we got home last night we looked at interesting things to check out and came across Ngarua Caves, about half an hour west of Nelson. These are natural limestone caves and they have tours every hour on the hour for $15. Driving via bendy mountain roads again we arrived there just before 11am, in time for the tour.

They also had bones from the now extinct moa. The birds fell through one of the openings and either succumbed to their injuries or starved to death. One of the skeletons has been carbon dated to 24,980 years old.

This is the hutch from which you emerge, the cave has separate entry and exit. Close to the exit is a field that apparently was used to shoot scenes for the Hobbit.

In the shop I noticed some photos of a split rock that looked familiar, and upon googling I found it's the Split Apple Rock, which was only half an hour away. So there was our second destination for the day.

Getting to it proved a little more difficult, with a steep 15 minute hike required to get from the carpark on top of a mountain down to the beach.

So this is what I recognised it from:

Unfortunately you can't get that close unless you swim to it or are on a boat. But the beach was very nice and secluded.

Simone wanted to check out some local art by artist Betty Salter, after seeing a brochure. Again, it was a 30 minute drive. Betty has a lot of paintings on show in her shed and she uses many different media, including pencil, charcoal, water colour, oils and pastels. Below is an example, she has painted many border collies, one painting in pencil looked just fantastic. It was a commission though and I couldn't find it on her website. Betty was kind enough to open her shed for us so we could browse the paintings and postcards she has for sale.

After Simone purchased some postcards, we left and on a whim Simone wanted to check out the World of WearableArt and Classic Cars. But the entry price of $22 was too high for me to justify, so I waited while Simone perused.

By the time we moved on, it was almost time for dinner so we decided to check out Nelson's number 1 restaurant according to Tripadvisor - Kraut's. Yes it's a German restaurant. Thankfully, not one that features constant yodeling music or dirndl-clad waitresses. It is a very contemporary restaurant/bar with pleasing background music and ambience.

We shared a mixed salad as a starter and then Simone had the Jaegerschnitzel while I had the pork shank, with spaetzle on the side. It was HUGE!!! The crackling on it was one of the best I've had, in fact both Simone and I could not fault any of the dishes. Yum! We shared an apple strudel with ice cream for dessert.

Tomorrow we cross over to the north island, if the ferry works. It's been in the news as being broken two days after entering service....ahem.

Day 10 & 11 - Whale Watching in Kaikoura

Leaving the resort town of Hanmer Springs we drove a shortish distance, about just under 2h, to Kaikoura, an old whaling town. We have two nights here and a whale watching trip booked. The drive here was again very hilly and bendy, but the weather held on and we had sunshine all the way.

Arriving in Kaikoura, this place has a main strip with restaurants, cafes and tourist shops and we found an increased number of tourists, especially backpackers, roaming the street. Definitely a popular tourist destination. We had to drive around a bit and check out the area before we were able to check in to our motel. We drove as far as we could to the tip of the town and found a nice plateau leading into the ocean. There were fur seals lying about 20m from the car park and you could wander onto the rocks right up to the egde of the ocean.

A local's catch of the day.

The beach behind our motel:

Lunch was at a local cafe that is apparently a popular breakfast spot for the locals, we had the chowder and a beef & bacon burger.

One of the expected highlights of the trip was the whale watching excursion, an we were not disappointed. The most abundant whale species around here are the sperm whales, but only males as the waters are too cold for the smaller, less blubbery females. There is a huge underwater canyon here and the whales dive town into it to feed. The area we went to was over 1km deep and the whales typically stay down there for almost an hour before coming up to breathe for around 10 minutes. So the boats need to time it right, otherwise they miss the whales. Typically you see an average of 1-2 whales per trip. Today we saw two, though we arrived at the second one just as he was preparing to dive again, so those who were late to deck missed the dive.

When they are on the surface they basically just float and breathe, getting rid of the carbon dioxide in their body and replenishing it with oxygen. Then we they are ready to go back down they do a couple of stretches, then arch their backs and dive head down, tail up. This is of course the money shot for photographers, and can really only be topped by a breaching shot. But sperm whales don't usually do this, the humpbacks are more known for jumping out of the water like this.

I got some nice shots of the tails, below are some of the first whale.

On the way back we came across several pods of dusky dolphins, they had little ones with them and several were having some fun jumping out of the water.

 On the way back the crew guide mentioned Blackfish, the documentary about orcas in captivity, specifically one orca called Tilikum. This lead to a pretty passionate anti-whaling message. Throughout the trip there was information about whales and wildlife, though some people on the boat had to concentrate more on trying not to throw up. Even Simone changed to a disturbing colour but we arrived out at the whale grounds just in time.

Tomorrow it's a roughly 3h drive to Nelson for our last couple of days on the south island.