Early in the morning, we left Dorset House and headed off to our first stop on our New Zealand holiday, Kaikoura. We hadn’t planned on going whale watching, as it was quite pricy, but we decided that we’d just make our way there and see whatever there was to see. It was the midpoint for where we were ultimately headed to at the end of the day, which was Nelson.
As we drove along the roads, it was our first oppurtunity to really check out the car’s performance. The night before, we had only driven from the airport to the hostel, which was less than 20kms away. Overall, we were quite impressed with the car’s performance, it was fairly new, and didn’t seem to have any problems.
My first impression of the “highways” in New Zealand was that they weren’t like the highways we have back in Malaysia. They’re mostly single lane roads, and they have many curves and bends all over the place! On that morning, it was quite foggy as well, which was quite scary considering the amount of driving I had planned for the two of us over the next week.
We had our first glimpse of sheep early on, and we had to stop to take pictures. Our excitement over the sheep died down pretty rapidly as we passed sheep every few kms along the highway!
After awhile, the fog cleared up somewhat and the views whilst driving were simply magnificent. There are so many snow topped mountains all over the place, and we were truly awed by their beauty.
We reached Kaikoura after about 2 1/2 hours of driving and made our way to the seal colony. Apparently there were a few areas that we could trek through, and the views were supposed to be magnificent. We parked our car, and there was a seal right in front of the carpark! It seemed to be putting on a show for us, and we got a few nice pictures, especially with the gorgeous background.
After walking around for awhile, we decided that it was time for lunch, and we stopped at a roadside stall nearby called Kaikoura Seafood BBQ. It was kind of like a picnic with views of the sea, but we didn’t realize how cold it would be!
We ordered garlic scallops with rice, and a whitebait fritter sandwich. We didn’t know what whitebait was, but we thought it sounded pretty exotic. How were we to know…it’s more or less like ikan bilis. The garlic scallops tasted quite nice, although the food got cold within seconds of arriving on the table. We were really freezing by the time the food came as the wind was really strong, so we tried to eat as fast as possible and get back into the car to warm our hands.
After lunch, we made our way to Nelson, which was about 3+ hours away, and I had my first taste of driving in New Zealand. For those of you who know me, you probably know I hate driving, so this was truly an experience. Luckily for me, there aren’t many cars driving around, which makes things much better. Compared to driving to work everyday which is…5kms at most (I think), I drove an amazing 120 kms today!
We checked into the Green Monkey which I had chosen, mainly because of the free Wi-Fi that they provided, plus the reviews online seemed pretty promising. The owner is a really friendly chap named Steve, and he gave us a tour of the area. It’s a house which has been converted into a hostel and has about 6 – 8 rooms. A lot of the guests there are long-term guests, so they’ve made it into their second home.
We went out for dinner not long after we checked in, as we know that places close really early. We found a Pizza Bar nearby, and the food there was really good, they gave complimentary garlic bread for starters, and we had a salmon cream pasta and a four topping pizza.
After that, we headed back to the Green Monkey to check out our hostel a bit more. The heater in the room seemed to be controlled by a central switch somewhere. I have no idea when it comes on, it just seems to turn on randomly in the middle of the night, so the room could get pretty cold.
The living area was very warm, there was a fireplace there, and there’s free cake baked every night (I assume it’s every night, as we were there two nights, and both nights had cake). The showers weren’t easy to control, it kept on going from too hot, to too cold. Me being me, of course I opted for too hot, and came out looking sunburnt!
We had a pretty early night, as we were off on a full day kayak the next day. I was praying for good weather, as I couldn’t imagine going out kayaking with rain coming down, and this was during winter! Thankfully, the weather forecast was for sun, so I had my fingers crossed that it was correct!
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Wow, nice pizza… can it beat the fourple-cheese-naan at Murni?
The landscape truly looks magnifique! I so wanna go to South NZ now!