Kaikoura - the town of seals, whales and Dolphins

I only had 1 night in Kaikoura but from what I experienced it was a nice small town with a few Fish n' chips shops, a cool beach (not sand but stone, still beautiful though) with mountains west of the beach and a nice bookshop. There is certainly more to the town than this - a lot of it is to do with Whale watching and dolphin watching/swimming.

The tourists pass though Kaikoura in the hopes of swimming with dolphins in their natural habitat the sea or spotting huge Whales. The Maori name Kaikoura means 'meal of crayfish' (Kai - food, koura - crayfish)

The night before leaving for Kaikoura from Christchurch I had spoken to a dorm mate who told me that he arrived at Christchurch 2 hours later than expected because the bus broke down - and this was with Naked bus company. So I was very pleased when the bus the next morning arrived 15 min before departure time, it was early enough having to get the bus at 7:00 am - and it's a rare thing that the bus is on time. There is always someone who is running late catching the bus delaying all others or some luggage that won't fit into the luggage storage on the bus.

Unbalance -

The bus was well on its way towards Kairoura when we had to pull to the side and the bus had to be weighed at a check point to see if the bus had too much weight/luggage. A lot of busses and trucks have to be weighted especially when going to the North of the Island since they might be boarding the Ferry.

After the bus had been weighted the driver was told to park beside the check point house and wait for further instructions. A police man came out and talked to the driver and the driver followed him into the check point house. The driver came out of the house with a very disappointed look on his face and told us that we were not allowed to continue the journey with this bus because of an overload on the rear end of the bus - the weight was not properly allocated on the rear axles and this caused unbalance.

The driver then had to backtrack to a small town that we had already passed on the way called Amberly and wait for his boss to call him in regards on how to solve this issue.

We waited for about 75 min and finally another bus came to the rescue. We had to be split into two busses going the same way to even out the weight issue.

The Dolphin Lodge -

I stayed in a house turned into a hostel on a hill overlooking Kaikoura town (The Dolphin Lodge) just 200 meters walk from the bus stop and with a beautiful view of the sea… wow! The room I stayed in had 4 single beds and one bunk bed and a view of the hostel garden and the sea.

It had a cosy atmosphere due to it being a house and not a 5 level building with huge rooms. As I wrote in my earlier blog post I love the smaller hostels. They tend to get people closer together even though only staying for 1 or two nights.

It felt like a lovely vibrant hostel with a happy attitude towards the people staying there. Which I must say, not every place can boast of - some places are by definition backpacker hostels only but the people running the place do not have any intention of giving any service at all or even being polite. The odd couple might stay at these places and they will be given an exceptional service due to the more money being spent but when it comes to the average backpacker they will just accommodate the bed and that is it. But luckily this was not a place like this you instantly felt like home - it had a soul J

At the time I didn't have the luxury of staying longer to do the Dolphin swimming (and I did check before arriving if they had seats on any the boats but everything was booked days ahead due to it being the busy season) but I thought to myself that I might do it on my way back since my Stray bus pass would take me through Kaikoura working my way back up to Picton after visiting the West and East.

My bus pass with Stray displayed an itinerary that would take me from Christchurch and work my way up North then westbound of the South Island, South, and then finish off back at the top of the East coast and onwards to Wellington - via Ferry from Picton to Wellington.

But for now I had bought a bus pass with the Naked Bus company so that I could met up with the Stray bus in Nelson. My next destination after Kaikoura would be Picton, the small harbour town with connecting Ferry service to Wellington.