Thursday 26th January 2023
Today we’re getting the train to Kaikoura. We only have a few hours until we need to be at the station so just took our bags with us as we headed into town (rather than leaving them at the hostel and coming to get them later, which we’d have been pushed for time to do).
We walked down to the seafront and sat on the grass for a while, watching the ducks and seagulls. It was very relaxing. Apart from the seagulls fighting every so often, although that was entertaining to watch!
Earlier in the week, Pete had noticed that the Bakehouse cafe do roast dinners. He’s very much missing them (back at home we’d have a roast most Sundays), so we went there for an early lunch. We had one roast pork dinner to share between us, and shared a sausage roll while we waited for it.
The say you should check in for the train 40 minutes in advance. I’m not sure it’s totally necessary, but we went there early all the same. Apparently we were the last to check in so obviously everyone else gets there even earlier! We were also the youngest there, probably by a couple of decades or so. I don’t know why the train isn’t more popular with younger people. It’s a bit inconvenient because it only runs once a day on 4 days of the week, but it was such a beautiful journey.
There’s an open air carriage which you can stand in and get a better view of the scenery, which is pretty cool.
There’s also commentary on the train, which is played through headphones (the headphones are provided on each seat). Annoyingly it’s not always obvious when the commentary is starting, a very subtle bong and a green line on the tv screens at the front of each carriage. So we ended up missing bits of it along the way. The excerpts we caught were quite interesting though, for example we learnt the pink pools we passed on one stretch of the journey were natural salt mines coloured pink by algae in the water.
The train has a café carriage with a full licensed bar serving hot and cold drinks, snacks, and hot meals (which looked a bit like microwave ready meals). The prices weren’t too bad so we bought a bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc to share.
When we arrived in Kaikoura, we walked to the Kaikoura Gateway Motor Lodge, where we’re staying for the night. We checked in, dropped our bags, then headed out for a walk.
It’s about 3 miles to the seal colony just past Point Kean Viewpoint, so we had enough time to get there and back before our 8.15pm dinner reservation. On the way we thought we spotted a lone seal on the rocks, although it was hard to tell if it wasn’t just a random black rock. We approached a bit closer until we could properly make it out and it was indeed a sole sleeping seal. Our first sighting of one in the wild! Hopefully we’ll see more at the actual seal colony.
About an hour later, we reached Point Kean Viewpoint and the colony. We weren’t disappointed – there were quite a few seals (this time more awake!) and I was surprised at how close they were.
We spent a bit of time observing them before the long but scenic walk back into town.
Dinner was at Zephyr Restaurant, where we ordered polenta fries and bread with dips as an appetiser, and then fish of the day and pork belly for mains. The polenta fries were great, but the rest was a bit disappointing. The bread seemed a bit stale, the fish overcooked, and both the fish and pork were extremely dry. It wasn’t terrible, but definitely didn’t live up to our expectations.
By the time we’d eaten it was getting late, so we walked back to our motel and headed to bed.
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 