All things marine-related!

Caught my first Magic bus to Kaikoura today. It was a pretty painless trip, our driver Lisa was good fun, giving us some commentary on the places we went past (including Cheviot, which we had a rest stop at) and playing some good-to-bad-to-awful music on her ipod over the coach speakers! We passed through some gorgeous scenery on the way, high hills of bush with the tops wreathed in mist, and some interesting towns, including one which had a sign reading "What if God was one of us?" with a picture of a sheep underneath it... not sure what they were trying to say there, but anyway.

When we'd almost reached Kaikoura, Lisa pulled over to rescue a group of Chinese tourists who's bus had overheated - the driver said they'd been stuck on the side of the road for two hours and no one had pulled over to help! Luckily they were headed to a whale-watching trip in Kaikoura, so we could take them straight there. After parting ways with them, we had a brief stop at the seal colony on the Kaikoura penisula, where the fur seals were basking out on the rocks right by walkways, apparently unaffected by the small crowd of tourists taking photos and pointing at them. We were soon driven back to the bus by the chilly weather and light rain, but still it's a taste of what I'll get tomorrow when I go on the Seal Swim!

Lisa was nice enough to drop me off near the Dolphin Lodge (Magic have contracts with certain hostels in each town they stop in, and won't generally drop travellers off at other places), but unfortunately that still left me at the bottom of a short but extremely steep hill! I made it though, out-of-breath and a little worried by my apparent lack of fitness.

The Dolphin Lodge is a cosy, homely place; a little run down and perhaps in need of more toilets and showers (and maybe slightly better security; my 4-share dorm was near the frontdoor which was open all day, and out of view of reception desk), but a great place to chill out and meet other people, with friendly (British) staff who were happy to bend the rules and help out in whatever way they could. The main room is an amalgamation of kitchen, lounge and dining area, with the reception area leading off it, with a staircase leading up to the quarters of the british couple of managed it behind the frontdesk. In the evenings people tend to congregate in this room (the dorms are a little sparse) and cook, eat, or lie on the sofas or chairs reading, talking, playing chess or planning their next days or week's adventures. I took a wander round the town, which is clearly and absolutely based upon marine-related activities - whale-watching, seal-swimming, dolphin watching-and-swimming, seabird watching etc - if you don't like marine-life it's not the best place to be, although there are some hikes up into hills and along the peninsula, and the stony beach itself.

After exploring a bit, I spent most of my first afternoon in Kaikoura at the kitchen table at Dolphin Lodge planning some things out, since a massive raincloud had settled over the town for the afternoon - it even blocked out the stunning mountain and sea view from the back deck, only revealing itself the next morning when the sky cleared.

written by

LizIsHere on February 10, 2010 from Kaikoura, New Zealand

from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010

Send a Compliment

comment on this...