New Zealand, Part III: Kaikoura and Christchurch

Kaikoura was, without a doubt, the most anticipated destination of our entire journey. Why? We had made reservations to swim, in the ocean, with dolphins and seals. Originally we were to do both of these in the same day. For reasons that will become apparent later, that plan eventually changed. But anyway…

We arrived at the hostel in the late afternoon, where we were greeted at the car (what service!) by the wildly enthusiastic and slightly unsettling French owners. None of the rooms had any locks, but there were free bikes, and we were assured that theft was a non-issue. That night, we decided to make a real dinner for the first time. After the spending spree debacle that was our trip to Melbourne and Sydney, the two of us had made a vow to cut back on our food spending. This meant preparing most of our meals, but by “preparing our own meals” I mean “making peanut butter sandwiches and instant noodles.” In Kaikoura, we decided to make something a little more elaborate: pasta. Natalie is weird and hates tomatoes, so she was fine with only cheese and no sauce. I, on the other hand, wanted sauce, so I mixed olive oil, a tomato, half an onion, a tiny zucchini and a smattering of spices into my most successful cooking achievement to this date. Seriously, I was really proud of myself. Then, Natalie wanted to make “puppy chow”, which is a dessert that incorporates Chex cereal, peanut butter, melted chocolate chips and powdered sugar into a highly fattening but eminently delicious creation. She’d made it lots of times in Townsville with her girlfriends, but here something went wrong and she set off the fire alarm. Luckily, nothing was harmed except some of the peanut butter, but it was embarrassing for all of us. During dinner, we had a long conversation with a young British couple who were traveling the world for several months before settling back down in London.

In the morning, we woke early, because we had a big day of swimming with animals. After receiving a wetsuit and all other applicable gear, we got on a boat with about 15 other passengers and went in search of a pod of dusky dolphins. For those of you who have been swimming with dolphins yourself, and maybe are not really very impressed with the idea, you can skip ahead. But know that these were wild dolphins, and that the boats do nothing like feed them or attract them to the boat in any way. It’s probably true that the dolphins have come to expect large groups of people every day, but the only thing that the animals get out of it is play time. Wow, I sound really defensive, for some reason. Anyway, we found about one hundred dolphins (not an exaggeration) after about a half-hour of searching, and we jumped in the water. It was amazing, even though my fingers almost froze off. Dolphins would swim up from underneath you, shooting by at speeds we couldn’t even dream of matching. Sometimes they would circle us, daring us to match their speed. We were told to make sounds the entire time in the water in order to attract the animals, and then to make eye contact with them once they arrived. I did my best to imitate dolphin noises, made nonsense sounds, even hummed “Under The Sea.” It was thrilling.

We got in and out of the water three separate times, following the pod as it made its way around the bay. Afterwards there was hot chocolate and ginger snaps and a lecture on the reckless endangerment of dolphins around the world, which I thought was a bit ill-timed but seemed acceptable to the rest of the passengers.

The plan, originally, was to swim with seals in the afternoon, but the warnings of the hostel owners and the temperature of the water dissuaded us, so we moved it to the following morning. That afternoon, we rode the hostel-provided bikes into town and wandered around, and later drove out to the nearby seal colony, which we would experience up close the following day.

The dolphin and seal swimming experiences can be compared in the following way: the dolphin experience was clearly run like a business (even though it was an impressively well-run, streamlined, friendly business), while the seal swimming was like if you had a friend that one day said “Hey, I know where some seals are and I have a boat, do you want to go swim with them?” Natalie and I were the only two people on the tour, which consisted of driving out to the seal colony on a dinghy (stopping at a crayfish-trapping boat, the owners of which tossed two live, recently caught crayfish into our boat—crazy!), then jumping into the water with the guide, who paddled around on a boogie board, pointing to where the seals were. Seals are more elusive than dolphins, and as a result they are more mysterious. Underwater, their eyes are unsettlingly cloudy, as if they are covered by cataracts that hide some deep wisdom. They move with a grace that is in complete contrast with this apparent blindness and on-land awkwardness. The seal colony is also home to huge kelp forests, fronds and leaves three feet in diameter, giving the environment an alien feel, but apart from the freezing temperatures, the whole experience was soothing. Afterwards, we felt like accomplished wildlife-swimmers. On to Christchurch!

Christchurch is described as “the most English” of New Zealand cities, and I think I agree, but then again, I’ve never been to England. A tiny river (the Avon), complete with river rats (!), runs through the city. We spent the longest time in Christchurch of any city of our New Zealand trip, but we probably did the least, visiting several art galleries, the botanic gardens, and the Arts Centre, a collective of 40 stores/artists plying their handicrafts, housed in an old cathedral-type building. It was nice, I guess, with the highlight of the art-gallery-visiting being a “brick circus” at the Centre for Contemporary Art, in which bricks were doctored and altered and added to in order to represent different circus acts. It was clever and cute and concrete, qualities that are usually lacking in much of the other art in the museum. We didn’t do much, but what was important about Christchurch is that it allowed us to recharge for a few days before a few hard days of driving and sightseeing: across the country, through the Southern Alps, to the glaciers, down to Queenstown and Milford Sound and then the long-anticipated trip home.