09 – jan 27: trip to the south island

the interislander

after an early waking up in our lovely hostel, and a superbly pleasant conversation with our hosts (and lots of petting of their HUGE bernese mountain dog, that is only bred in bern! what a coincidence), and giving them the thermometer with the penny, we departed towards our ferry.

the ferry is completely unlike any ferry i’ve seen before. for one, when we say ferry in toronto we mean this kinda tiny boat that houses maybe 300 people, the ferry that we took here is called the interislander, takes 3 hours to move between the islands, and has seating for at least 700 people + however many cars (we didn’t go into the car parking area). it is huge – the biggest boat i’ve ever been on – has like 7 levels, and tonnes of things – cafes, movie theatre, a few outside decks, workstations (with plugs for internet and electricity – unfortunately they were still in process of having broadband internet (o_O no idea how) and didn’t have any dial up either), shops and a lot of comfortably wide walkways. very spaced out ship in terms of seats and walkways – i’m sure it could actually handle more people than it takes. which is itself an interesting point as it seemed to be almost entirely empty. at no single point it felt like there were too many people around you.

we quickly got our south island car – a dark red mitsubishi lancer, in a far worse shape than the car we’ve had on the north island. so bad that the next day we’re stopping by christchurch (biggest city on the south island and thankfully on our way to where we need to go – also coincidentally the city out of which we’re flying out) avis to see if we can exchange it. we quickly departed towards kaikoura – the city in which oleg has booked a hostel for us.

cafe in the middle of nothing

on the long and picturesque drive along the coast two very pleasantly surprising stops awaited us. the first was a cafe, called “the store”, that was located precisely in the middle of nowhere. imagine a big, old, stylish looking barn – wooden walls, tall ceilings, and a lot of wine cellars around the place. wooden chairs and little round tables, with candles and salt/pepper shakers litter the left side of the room, and in front a huge open arch that gives you a few of perfectly turquoise ocean, crashing waves on black sharp rocks, and lush greenery in the courtyard.

the place is so particularly awesome because it has absolutely nothing for kilometres either way, except for the beach with polished rocks on it, and sharp cliffs cutting the turquoise water into white foam.

another reason why i loved it is cause they gave the hungry me a mindblowingly awesome carrot cake. it was the best carrot cake i’ve ever eaten in my life. moist, soft, with awesome sweet glaze and here’s the genius part – they cover the top entirely with raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and offer yogurt on the side. yum. i gotta learn how to make that.

while i was devouring that piece of art, oleg walked around the beach, and i snapped a few photos of him looking absolutely tiny compared to the nature. after the magnificent cake (okay okay i’m done with the cake now) i went down to the beach too and collected a few of the amazingly white (and grey and black) smooth round rocks that were lying around. the place is just surreal. the best i could describe it is … its like you’ve been moved into an hdtv show. its like outside of life.

anyway.

after that amazing stop, we continued on with the picturesque drive. so picturesque, that coming upon a viewing point in the road (its just a few meters of pavement to the side that let cars stop for a little, and maybe stairs to the beach) we decided to stop and take a few snapshots of the ocean.

well, turns out that the crazy kiwis don’t make stops for just ocean. apparently its a stop in the middle of the highway, where wild seals come to have babies and raise them (not sure about making them). we couldn’t go down to the water, but we did get an amazing view of about 40 seals, totally wild, swimming, with lots of tiny cute baby seals (OHMYGOSH THEY WERE SOOO ADORABLE!!!). they were playing, and fighting, and just lying in the sun, and it was generally again surreal that in the middle of the highway there is a huge seal colony.

planning for the future

upon arrival to our hostel we attempted to book stays for the next few nights, where we came upon a load of problems. essentially, everything comfortable in terms of location, quality, and price was full. after a lot of tinkering and a lot of phonecalls we have figured out a way to get to our next location – mnt cook, a superbly awesomely cool mountain, supposedly anyway – with the least damage on all fronts. note to ya’ll – book ahead as far as you can.

quiet evening

the evening at the hostel in kaikoura was very nice and quiet. oleg went out to the ocean again, while i did laundry and chatted on the phone. i also realized i lost the aforementioned scarf (see ‘whole day at national park’ entry) – forgot it in the awesome hostel we stayed the previous nights. they are so kind as to actually mail it back to canada (they have my address as you write it down upon registration), payment on delivery. w00t! i’ll seriously miss the scarf throughout the rest of this trip though.

for dinner we had shrimps with alfredo sauce and penne. the sauce was store bought, and superbly tasty for the price, quality, quantity and the amount of non work :D this is the 2nd excellent sauce experience in this kind of travel – i think we will have a lot more pasta + sauce nights, especially since oleg doesn’t eat rice.

we’ve also had a medium sized bottle of heineken, with the leftover cold shrimp, which made the entire day be very enjoyable. the first day on the south island of new zealand is thus declared a success.