Kaikoura
Last weekend, we teamed up with friends from Nelson (north side of the South Island) to spend the weekend camping in Kaikoura, a little town on the northeast coast of the South Island, famous for its abundant sealife. Off Kaikoura’s coast are three ocean trenches, bringing cold and nutrient rich water close to shore because of tidal upwelling. This means that whales, dolphins, seals, orca, sharks and other sea creatures populate Kaikoura’s coastal waters.
We hauled our backpacks and surfboards onto the Bluebridge ferry and left for Picton, where we were picked up by Bronwyn, who was in Willemijn’s team during the World Ultimate Frisbee Championship in Sydney. We stuffed our packs in the back of her four wheel drive, tied our boards to the roof, opened a nice cold Summer Ale and set course for Kaikoura. It was pissing down - we even had a bit of hail - so our original plan of pitching a tent somewhere didn’t seem particularly appealing.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped at a place called the Kekerengu Store, a cafe in the middle of nowhere, to have some coffee. We met some fellow dutchies who were touring New Zealand on motorcycles and after some smalltalk about the rain and the great outdoors we discovered that one of them studied philosophy at Utrecht University, at the department where Willemijn and I spent many years studying and working! It’s a small world…
We gave up the idea of camping when some of Bronwyn’s friends with local knowledge managed to get us into some decent accomotation, on the beach, very close to some of Kaikoura’s famous surfbreaks. Bronnie’s partner glenn and his son Felix were waiting for us in Kaikoura and after fish and chips and a few beers we went to our accomodation. The rain was gone the next day, so we could have lunch outside and after that, it was time to hunt and gather our dinner!
glenn brought his spearfishing gear plus some extra masks, and after some scouting around (”going on a little reckie”) we found a promising spot to do some spearfishing. glenn caught some nice Butterfish - also known as Greenbone because they have green bones - and Blue Moki. I had a go at handling the speargun, but since I didn’t have fins I had to go after the fish swimming with my arms, which I couldn’t because I was holding the gun… Unsurprisingly I didn’t catch a single fish.
So I left the catching to glenn and made myself useful gutting some fish.
And Willemijn skillfully skinned and filleted some of our dinner.
The next day, we checked the surfspots nearby. The swell wasn’t classic and the most famous pointbreak in the area wasn’t breaking, but fortunately there were a few small but fun waves almost on our doorstep!
Here’s the insanely crowded lineup, with Willemijn paddling in while I’m on my way back out:
Parallel to the coast runs the Kaikoura Seaward Range, with some peaks reaching 2600m. Ocean, rainforest and the mountains in the background….
What can we say, we’ve had heaps of fun in a beautiful place with wonderful people!
Check the rest of the photos.
