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Published: November 18th 2008
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We spent the rest of the afternoon driving back to Motueka to get some supplies and to check our email, I wanted to tell mom about what had happened with the seals.
We arrived around dusk and pulled into the car park behind the Info centre. We met a couple of hippies, Melf from Germany and Christina from Ontario. I asked them if it was cool to stay overnight in the town and they told us it was no problem except a market was due in the car park in the morning so we’d have to park in the street, but it was no problem. We chilled and drank some beers with them before crashing out when they sloped off to some party, we were just too burnt out to go with them.
The next morning Pili and I and our new hippy friends wandered around the market, drank coffee and ate choc-chip muffins. Pili and I found some cool beanie hats made from alpaca wool, at $9.00 each, we couldn’t resist.
Mid morning Melf and Christina cooked up a large plate of spring rolls, delicious, all were gone within minutes. Melf then started juggling and caught the
attention of several passer by’s. One very straight laced looking guy with his wife stopped and asked for a lesson, this would never happen in the UK; in fact I’m sure if you saw four travellers cooking, eating and juggling at the side of the road in a suburban town the Police would have been there in minutes. What a very refreshing attitude Kiwi’s have.
In the afternoon Pilar and I went to a large campsite to use the showers and wash some clothes, we then headed for the harbour. I strung up a washing line and hung out our washing to dry in the afternoon sun, which was now getting quite hot.
We prepared lunch and then I had a small siesta, rude not too
We’d arranged to meet Melf and Christina in town at 4pm to buy some supplies (beer, wines and other essentials) and then the plan was to head to the river and set up camp, fire and all.
After a 5 minute drive and a little off road coaxing of the van we arrived at a superb river location. The girls went about collecting a huge amount of drift wood, I was
totally distracted by half a dozen White Fronted Terns skimming the top of the river, hawking for midges. With my camera set on my mono-pod, 400mm lens, I went to work. These little birds are fast little suckers. I felt like a fighter pilot trying to keep the target in my sites and in focus. In an hour I filled an 8Gig SD card, how many are good sharp photos we’ll have to wait and see!
When I returned the camp fire was burning and a hive of activity was happening around the vans. I thought I’d better pull my weight so I prepared baked potatoes stuffed with garlic butter, cheese and chopped peppers. While waiting for dinner to cook in the flames we drank a bottle of red wine and several beers. The potatoes turned out excellent and we chatted and laughed into the early morning.
Just after sunrise I climbed out of the van feel fuzzy with a full bladder and desperate for caffeine, all were accomplished with 5+ minutes.
The river bank had filled up with white bait fisherman once again; it was time to investigate what this was all about as this river
was full of sea trout and salmon, why fish for white bait?
After talking to a couple of guys I was informed that these minute fish sell for more pound for pound than the very best salmon and many fisherman can earn a years money within a couple of months, you learn something new every day.
At about midday Pilar and I broke camp and said our goodbyes, Melf and Christine were a lot of fun and we could have easily stayed longer, but it was time to head south.
Our new destination was Kaikoura via the famous wine district of Blenheim. We had intended to do a wine tasting but on arriving in Blenheim we decided to leave it until the end of the NZ journey. To best perfectly honest we have sampled more than our fair share of Kiwi wine already 😉
After a near 6hr drive we arrived just north of Kaikoura at a place called Ohau Point, which is famous for its fur seal colony. When we arrived a heavy sea mist had rolled in, we pulled in anyway and got out to have a look around. Through the gloom we did
make out a couple of large adults sat on the rocks. Even if we couldn’t see them we knew they were their from the pungent and distinctive seal smell, a little like sweaty clothes mixed with rotting fish, NICE!!
Across the road we could just make out an info board, on further investigation we found it was info about a short walking path to some waterfalls, this sounded good. We had taking no more than 20 steps onto the path along a small and beautifully clear stream when we stumbled across two young fur seals playing in the water, again sheltering away from the dodgy weather it seemed. We just couldn’t believe our luck, twice in three days. We stayed with the pups from about an hour and a half, if anything it was even better than the last time. Again the seals wanted to check us out, they seemed to loose their fear with about 10 minutes, coming right up to my hand to smell me. I thought this was a little rich considering. Of course the whole episode was captured on film. Pilar’s is become quite the camera woman.
We didn’t actually make it to Kaikoura,
The master juggler
Melf doing his thing all because of the seals, we weren’t complaining though. We parked up by the sea, I cooked us some sausages, onions and cheesy potatoes and we crashed, well Pilar did, I was up downloading photos/film and writing this bloody blog until 1am.
In the morning I spent an hour on the shore line and photographed the seal colony and a glorious sunrise.
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