Kia ora, Kaikoura.

In Maori, that means: Hello, good day, town of crayfish food.

Kiakoura is actually named after a Maori story. The entire name is Te ahi Kaikoura Tama ki te Raki. It means "the fire that cooked the crayfish of Tame ki te Raki". He was on a journey from the North Island around the South Island to find his three runaway wives and he stopped here for dinner. Kai means food and koura means crayfish. And this town fishes for crayfish (which are lobster sized and cost $50 here).

In Kaikoura, I spent a lot of time just sitting on the beach. The hostel was right on the beach. It was very nice and there were some really cool people there. I shared my room with a Swiss girl and an American guy who had met a few days prior to arriving in town. The guy had the same pack as me, only in the boy version. His was 5 L larger, but mine was (slightly) heavier. I don't know how I do it. We had a lot of fun, cooked dinner together in the amazing kitchen (some hostels don't have amazing kitchens, this one did). They actually invited me to come to Nelson with them, but I already have the rest of my trip pretty much planned out! I also met a German guy who had traveled through Canada, Australia, now NZ, and was heading to Thailand. He said Canada was his favourite country (I'm biased, but I can understand what he's saying :)

This was the gravel beach. O yeah, Kiakoura is at the base of a beautiful mountain range. There is snow at the top of the mountains all year round. When I saw the snow, I felt SO happy, like happy homesickness. I'm sure I'll take that back next March.


My NZ wool on the NZ beach. Fits right in.


On my second day in Kaikoura, I walked down to the Saturday market. I bought some honey and I had a whitebait sandwich. Whitebait is a local delicacy, it's at the end of the season right now, and apparently it's worth a lot of money. I had no idea what it was, but I thought I'd try. It's tiny little fish fried in a pancake. Yep. Eyeballs and everything. O, and they serve it on a piece of Wonderbread with margarine. HOW is that a delicacy? It tasted pretty good, but I couldn't look at the little worm-fish while I was eating it. Here is a horrible picture of my mostly-eaten whitebait pattie.


And, there's a big thing in Kaikoura. A big crayfish, of course. Since this I've found two more big things in NZ, so watch out for them.


More perfect knitting on the beach, this is going with this and it looks lovely. It'll be nice and warm for the winter back home.


And then I hiked out around the lovely coastline. The seabreezes here were just so refreshing.


I walked out to the end of town to see Fyffe house, the only remaining house from the whaling days in Kaikoura. And this house belonged to the man who brought the whaling industry to this region. I don't know if it's always been pink, but now it's very, very pink. And it's built on whale bones as a foundation. They also used the bones as fences.


A cool cookie cutter in the kitchen cupboard :)


Whale vertebrate on the front porch.


I went down to a wool farm to see a sheep shearing show. That was interesting. This is a picture of Ramman, one of the rams at the farm. I fed him. I can't show any pictures of the sheep being sheared because it was too traumatizing. It took three minutes with electric clippers to shear one sheep, but the farmer can actually do it in 37.2 seconds. In the background you can sort of see the little sheepdog pup that's learning how to work on the farm. His name is Sam! There's also a little bit of a black sheep too. They're both eating the ram's food.


These are some of the lambs at the wool farm. I got shocked by the electric fence for this photo (and it's not even that good...I wanted more lily and spotted lamb face). I'm sure I'm not the first since people come here to see the lambs and I didn't notice any signs indicating the fence was electric. The farmer even told one guy he could go in with the lambs and didn't mention the fence. Anyway, it was just like a flick to the muscle of my left arm and I was totally fine.


On my last day in Kaikoura, I borrowed a bike from the hostel (for free, that was nice) and rode out to see one of the seal colonies and hike around the end of the peninsula.

Baby sealface! Can you see him?


Landseal, right beside the boardwalk. You're supposed to keep at least 10 m between you and the seals. Usually, that's no problem because they stay out on the rocks. This guy was right beside the boardwalk. I wasn't that close, but other people were.


The hike was really neat. There were all kinds of old Maori sites along the way. The ridges you can see in the first hill were actually a Maori fort, or Pa. The town of Kaikoura is around the other side of the point. It was so foggy I couldn't really see the mountains in the background.


I sat up over the ocean and knitted for awhile.

Interislander.

I took the ferry from the North Island to the South Island. The trip took about 3.5 hours. It was a nice ride, but I felt seasick and couldn't stay out on the deck long enough because it was pretty cold. The water was really rough, but the ship was huge. I think it was bigger than the Chicheemaun.


The views were beautiful, just a bit hard to enjoy when you feel so nauseated.


When we came into port at Picton, the ferry actually had to do a three-point turn in the harbour in order to dock. There were a bunch of people learning how to sail, and as we turned, at least half of them just fell out of their boats. It was pretty funny because we were far away from them, but I'm sure we seemed a lot closer since they were little and on the water. The next day I watched the sailing school again and as soon as the ferry started to turn, they all fell out again.

Lovely Kaikoura.

Hi,

I caught the bus south down the east shore of the South Island today. It dropped me off in a little fishing village called Kaikoura. This place is so beautiful. There is a turquoise ocean infront of me and snowcapped mountains behind me. It's not cold, their just very tall.

The bus driver stopped so we could take pictures of a seal colony.

When I got off the bus I had fish and chips for dinner. It was delicious.

Tomorrow I'm going to the market, seeing sheep shearing, and hiking around the peninsula.

I'll write more later! Love, Cass

Just booked my last flight!

YYZ-YVR
YVR-AKL-PER
PER-ASP
CNS-BNE-SYD
SYD-AKL
DUD-WLG
AKL-LAX-YYZ

That's where I went, and where I'll be going, just in airport codes. There have been many more stops in between!

Wellington - another mini windy city.

Wellington is on the Cook Strait at the very southern bit of the North Island of New Zealand. Everyone who goes to the South Island by boat has to pass through here. The shoreline is dominated by huge industrial buildings. It's also the capital of NZ, home to parliment and all sorts of interesting cultural things that go along with being the capital city of a country.

One place I checked out this morning was the Basin Reserve. It was a lake when Wellington was first settled, but an earthquake filled it in and the people set it aside to be used for recreation. They built the cricket field in the 1860's and proclaimed that this area would be used for the noble sport for 'all of eternity' or something like that. When you first enter the basin, you aren't really that impressed if you don't know what's going on. Once you start talking to the old guys who run the place, it's much easier to get caught up in the history of the sport. This is NZ's oldest cricket stadium.


Today the Wellington professional team was playing Auckland. These boys are under 6 month contracts. A lot of them go up to Europe to play professional cricket during the Northern Hemisphere's summer. They make about $35,000 a season. Nothing compared to the NHL players. I watched the first half of the first day of a four-day-long match. Only two players from one team had been up to bat. They scored 150 runs in that time. One guy got out, then it was lunch break.


These four men showed me around the musuem and explained the game to me. They thought I caught on quickly and really loved chatting with me. I might stop by tomorrow to see a bit of day two and visit with them some more.


I bought this mini cricket ball from them as a souvenier. They thought I was funny. They don't know how I can't resist mini things.


I spent the afternoon at Te Papa, which means Our Place, in English. It's the national museum and it is the most incredible, amazing, fantastic, beautiful, wonderful museum I have ever been to. And it's free. It has six floors and every exhibit is equally incredible. I only got to see 4 of the six floors, so I need to go back. Maybe tomorrow, but I want to see cricket and the botanical gardens too, so maybe on my way back north. I just know that I really can't miss it. I did a horrible job of photographing the place, so I'll try to do a better job of that as well.

This is the Treat of Waitangi exhibit. That was the treaty signed between the Maori people and the Brits when they first came here. There's a lot of controversy and interesting political problems around the treaty and it's all too difficult to explain tonight.


I found all the most interesting things to take pictures of. This is a silver wool scale.


This is a lace machine.


This is a huge poster of the Beatles visiting NZ and wearing the largest, most obnoxious tiki necklaces ever.


Beautiful woven purses.


A reproduction of the poorly treated Treaty of Waitangi. It was almost burned, then it was shut into a drawer, flooded, eaten by rats, and almost forgotten.

Taupo!

I suppose I should add some words.

I took this picture out the window of the bus on my way from Rotorua to Taupo. The landscape of the North Island is literally shaped by agriculture - sheep farming. You can see how all of the rolling hills have groves worn along their sides. These were all created from the millions and billions of sheep who have grazed across this country.


Taupo is on the side of New Zealand's largest lake, Lake Taupo. The Waikato River flows into Lake Taupo. The river has this beautiful turquiose water. I couldn't stop taking pictures of it. This isn't even a very good example, but I liked these trees growing in the river.


Taupo is known as the place to bungey jump in NZ. This is where my cousin, Jonathan, went to bungy jump (he had the t-shirt). I don't jump off tall things, but I watched for quite awhile. People make really weird/funny sounds when they jump off a cliff. One girl kept screaming as she swung around and as they collected her with the boat below and as she was dropped off on shore. This jump is about 50 m.

I hiked all along the Waikato and went to see the great Huka Falls. I read that this is one of the most visited areas in NZ. It's got nothing on Niagara. I had a conversation about waterfalls with a German-speaking guy I met. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out that he was asking me about Niagara because the German accent makes it sound like Knee-a-Gar-a, or something. Anyway, I figured it out and told him all about the place.

While I was hiking back from the Huka Falls, I came across a hotwater swimming hole. The water was really warm. Even though it was quite cool out (about 12 degrees that day) there were quite a few poeple swimming. As I walked along the river, I thought I would feel to see if the water a little further up was warm. I went down to the riverside and slipped and slid into the water. It was not warm. I was pretty embarrassed, but I knew I'd dry off quickly because the sun was out and the wind was dry, and there wasn't anyone around to really see me. OF course, as soon as I got back to the trail, I ran right into a guy I had met in Alice Springs in Australia. He laughed at me for falling into the river. Thought I was going to get away with it, but not in this small world. By the time I finished chatting with him I was dry and headed off to catch my bus.


Some sheep.
The red tiki at Taupo.

Hotsprings and Mitai in Rotorua.

Rotorua is a really interesting town in the Bay of Plenty region. There's a lot of geothermal activity, so the entire town is full of open hotsprings. I saw signs that say the mud boils at 212 degrees celcius. This makes the entire town smell like sulphur. Luckily, you mostly get used to the smell. Even on the third day I was there I would walk past some places in town and still smell the sulphur very strongly. It was worth it though because there were so many cool things to see and do in the town. I really felt like I didn't have enough time there.

All of the hotsprings have fences built around them so that people can't fall in. The main park is literally fenced area after fenced area. My favourite springs and the ones with the boiling mud. There are also ones with boiling water and larger hot lake areas. This is a boiling mudpit.


This is one of the lakes right in the centre of town.


To keep the tourists out of the dangerous hotsprings, the city has built little footbaths throughout the park. I sat in one for a really long time. It was sort of cold out and my feet were freezing so it was really nice to just relax here.


In the evening, I went to a Maori show at the Mitai village. A van picked me up at the hostel and we drove out to Rainbow Springs where this tribe lives. I don't think they actually live out there though. I have a feeling they all have apartments in town and things because my bus was late after the show and I saw them all leaving in their cars and things. They tell you they live there though. Maybe the family or tribe owns the land still. First, you see the tribe actors come down the river in their canoe. The canoe was actually carved by people in the tribe. All of the actors are about 22. The chief was maybe 26. I don't know if he's actually a chief. They are all interested in learning about the culture and language though, so that's good.


Then they put on a show. It was really exciting. Kind of scary at times. There was a visiting tribe at the show and I had been chatting with some of the women before the show started. Then they wanted me to sit in the very front row with them. They all had to stand up and sing a special song. I didn't join in because I didn't know any of the words. I felt very tall and white.


The dinner was cooked in a traditional hangi, or ground oven. The only traditional food item was the kumera, or sweet potatoe. The rest was chicken, lamb (of course...I'm a little sick of it), scalloped potatoes, stuffing (weird), coleslaw, garden salad, rice salad, corn salad, potato salad, and, you guessed it, garlic bread. I also had a fine New Zealand Steinlager (German beer) to finish it off. I sat with a nice girl from America named Becca. O, and dessert was trifle, chocolate log cake, and fruit salad.


The next day I went to the historic Rotorua Bathhouse Museum. What an interesting place. Basically, the rich British people wanted to take advantage of the medical miracles the hotsprings could provide. They built this huge, expensive, tudor-style building. Every single pipe in the place had to be replaced in the first three months because the acidic water destryoed it. From then on in it had continuous problems and never was completed. It was abandoned, turned into a nightclub, abandoned, fixed up, abandoned, then taken over to become a really cool musuem. I liked it a lot and they've done a great job at explaining the history of the place.
They have this really neat exhibit that shows the history of the volcanic activity and you sit in these seats and the entire room shakes when the volcanoes explode on the screen. They don't even tell you that's going to happen. It was pretty funny.


And the entire town is full of beautiful tiki carvings. I took more pictures of them. Most of them are actually red, but I liked this white and black guy the best.