New Zealand Adventure
December and January 2019-2020
New Year's in Kaikoura: Tuesday, December 31st-Wednesday, January 1st
We woke up and had breakfast in our little cottage--pikelets with honey; fresh bread the owner left in the breadbox outside our door, warm and wrapped in a towel, made into toast with butter; muesli or wheatbix with milk (Samantha and Helen are sold on the honey-sweetened mini wheatbix, and I agree it's kind of a compelling cereal, softer but not mushy with milk, and basically a granola bar when dry); lavender tea; hot cocoa; bananas; and grapes. We headed downtown and dropped off a load of laundry to wash in the little laundromat, then went to the Kaikoura Museum at the other end of the Main Street.
It was very small, but cute—an eclectic museum of stuff from the past, with some weird and wild interpretive displays, and different levels of scavenger hunts for the kids and their different ages with postcard prizes. Robert ran down to put laundry into the dryer while we were still there, and then we stopped in at the I-site across the street to book a whale-watching flight for later, and went to Nin's Bin on the beach for lunch (whitebait omelet sandwich, chip sandwiches that I brought all the ingredients for except the fresh chips, and of course crayfish). We ate at a picnic table right by the water, sharing the table with an Australian family and talking to them about the fires in Australia.
The crayfish legs were sweet and divine--a very distinct flavor from lobster, actually, and a slightly different texture. After lunch we tried to find the path to the Ohau waterfall but couldn’t--maybe the path was destroyed in the 2016 earthquake? We weren't sure. We walked along the beach near Nin's Bin and further south, looking at seals, gulls, a few little penguins, and the wonderful rocky shingle shores.
We ate some clementines in the car and drove south to the airfield, but since the seas were very rough they suggested we come back the next morning--all the whitecaps would make it harder to spot whales. Instead we walked along the coast for awhile, seeing more seals and birds, as part of the Kaikoura coastal walk. I stopped partway because my ankle was starting to burn a little, but Robert (with Helen asleep on his back) and the big kids walked another 20 minutes out and then doubled back on the top of the bluffs. I napped on a bench in the sun with my hat tipped down over my eyes, and when they came back, we headed into town for more half-priced sushi at 6:00 (eaten at the table on the little town center nearby), then a bit of souvenir shopping, and then dinner at Black Rabbit Pizza for some interesting pizzas, and ice blocks from the dairy.
After dinner we went to Cray-Z Mini Golf; Samantha was fascinated by the spelling of the name, and Robert liked the price ("Oh, $5 a person--or whatever you want, really. Just a little something for the adults would be nice..." said the woman watching the place). Two twin brothers had spent a year making it in their front yard when they were sixteen, 36 years ago, and we had fun on the nine holes; it was simple in concept, but very slopey, and trickier than it looked.
On New Year's Day we went back to the airfield for a 9:30 flight in an eight-seater Airvan, with Helen on my lap, and two other people. Everyone loved it--we saw a sperm whale go up and down and around for about five solid minutes, and then we saw a pod of about a hundred dolphins, plus the breath-taking views up and down the coast.
We walked along the Haumuri bluffs and along the railroad tracks near the water, then out on tidal flats as the tide was going out. We stopped and checked out a 100-year-old train wreck washed by waves and saw lots of seals and dolphins in the water, and other seals on the beaches.
We went back to the cottage for a lunch of leftovers (some of our favorite condiments pictured below) and a bit of relaxation and dominos.
After lunch we headed back to the beach just on the south side of town to get our fishing charter. I had reserved it online ahead of time, and I was pretty aware that all I was, in fact, reserving, was a man with a boat. I told the kids to go to the bathroom before we left the cottage, and Robert said something mild like "Or they can go when we get there--I'm sure there's a bathroom somewhere where you board the boat." I was doubtful, because I knew this wasn't a big commercial charter company, but I left it at that. When we drove to the address I had in my records, Robert stopped. "This can't be right," he said. "Do you have the right address? This is...just a house." It was indeed a house, with several figures inside the living room peering out at us, and waving enthusiastically. There was actually a small sign advertising fishing charters on the fence, so I put on a braver front than I felt and encouraged Robert to turn into the driveway. One of the men came out and told us to "look around the back" and then come inside. We were a little baffled, but we dutifully checked out the backyard, where all the children remarked upon their very large pile of beer bottles waiting for recycling. Into the house we went, where the general impression was one of lots of men, most of them shirtless. They all talked to us for awhile, and then decided it was time to leave. Two of them ended up coming fishing with us, and another two helped get the boat into the water, while the final man--the father of one the main fisherman--just sat shirtless in an armchair and kept talking to Robert long after the time when we were ready to go fishing. There was also a dog--Captain Sparrow, a retired drug sniffer dog ("What kind of drugs?" Samantha asked) who now has Parkinson's and would love to go fishing but can't--"he'd fall over," one of the men said. "Get going!" one of the fishing men yelled, from the driveway where they were now in a truck getting ready to lead us to the beach. "Robert!" I called, in a mixture of sweetness and panic, from where I had herded our children back into our car, "I think they want us to go?" He backed out of the house, still nodding as the old man talked on. "I didn't just want to leave," he protested, "He was still talking to me..." "Ha!" one of the fishing guys said. "We call him the Bailiff! He always tries to keep people prisoner, ha! You just gotta run away!" We essentially did.
At the beach we watched as they used a tractor (a Ferguson, a British brand; we weighed in on the John Deere vs. Farmall debate, and the fishing guys definitely had opinions on the subject) to get the boat in the water, while we were actually on the boat. Then two of the fishing guys stayed with us and the others said they'd see us after, when we'd "pop round the house again." We were already disoriented enough, but soon it became obvious that their boat, while it seemed seaworthy enough as best I could tell, was incredibly bouncy, driven at high speeds across waves with nowhere to sit and barely anything to hold onto. Thank goodness we were all wearing life jackets, though this did mean that Helen was too bulky for me to put her in my sling. Marcus had good enough sea legs that he stood on one side of the boat, mostly bracing himself, and was able to fish from there. Robert stood on the other side of the boat, also with a rod. Samantha was in between Robert and me, and each of us kept grabbing her as she bounced around with the motion of the boat, but she managed her own rod herself (she was very determined). Meanwhile I had a death grip on Helen, and a smile pasted on my face. I am sure I was speaking in what Sarah calls "that voice," as I said things like "WOW, ISN'T THIS FUN? KIDS, LOOK AT ALL THOSE BIRDS" and really tried gamely to distract people from the likelihood of one or more of us bouncing overboard. I braced myself against part of the boat and kept Helen's head from bouncing into anything hard. I also fed her malt biscuits pretty much nonstop, having had an open package of them shoved into a pocket, and knowing from long experience that as long as our little Hobbit was eating, she was not going to be scared.
Over the course of the next two hours (two hours too long), Samantha caught four big perch and a baby shark. Marcus got at least five keeper perch too and threw back three as too small. Robert got three more perch and a blue cod. We pulled up some crayfish traps, but they were all so small they needed to be tossed back; still, the fishing guys assured us they'd checked other crayfish traps earlier and had saved us two from a big haul from those traps that morning. We saw an albatross come down and eat bits of fish guts the fishing guys (and Marcus too) tossed up at it. We also saw a pod of dolphins just about twenty feet from the boat as we headed back into the harbor at the end, and there was clearly a baby dolphin riding on its mother's back. The fishing guys pointed out how the other dolphins were getting in between us and the mom and baby, and they said from its size and the way the pod was moving, they thought the baby was just a few minutes old. That was all really cool, but then there was, of course, the nagging terror and also the nagging seasickness--though, again, it was hard to completely distinguish that from terror--that led me at one point to mouth to Robert (smile again pasted on my face for childrens' benefits) "I NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS BOAT." He nodded, and said he felt the same way--and neither of us, really, gets seasick.
Another highlight of trip was when the fishing guys pulled up the crayfish trap to reveal two large, beautiful octopi suction-cupped inside the traps. "Wow!" I breathed, "How awesome!" "Awesome?" the fishing guy repeated, with a tone in his voice I couldn't place. "Not awesome at all! They're trying to eat our crayfish!" I dimly registered that the tone in his voice was irritation, and I tried to process his words, but meanwhile he was hacking at the octopus with his knife. My instinct was to cover up Helen and Samantha's eyes (Marcus was out of reach and had to fend for himself) to shield them from the senseless anti-octopi violence. "Are you going to throw them back?" asked Robert, who it seemed was also struggling to process the situation. Those octopi were toast by then, hacked up and hauled off the trap, parts of them flung into the churning water, parts tossed at sea gulls, and parts tossed into the bait drawer. "They're just pests," the fishing guy said. "So you don't eat them then?" I asked. "No," he said, surprised. "Do you?" "Uh, yes," I said. "Oh," he said, sounding genuinely disappointed. "You should've told me!" Clearly, just as we hadn't imagined him springing into action to destroy the octopi, he had never imagined delicate American tourists, outnumbered by their children, actually wanting to eat the octopi--a failure of imagination on all sides, apparently.
When the boat was finally back on the beach I basically leapt off it. The fishing guys made some disparaging comments about someone else who was using a Ford F-150 to drag another boat into the water. Marcus--who had been fascinated by cars and trucks for about a year now, and who would pass the time in the car in New Zealand by rattling off the names of different models he saw, and informing us whether they were the same as in the US, same name but different look, different name but same look, or entirely different--perked up. "A Ford F-150?" he asked hopefully, ready for this conversation. "Yeah," the fishing guy said, "You'll burn out the engine right quick, there. I've ruined many a truck like that, don't I know. The Mrs. doesn't like it!"
While Marcus peppered him with questions about how common F-150s were in New Zealand, I focused on feeling actual ground under my feet. I wasn't sure I could walk, yet, but the moment of stillness gave me pause to reflect on the fact that this fishing guy apparently had a "Mrs."
I managed to walk to the car, and we did, as instructed, pop back around to the main guy's house to settle up. Smiling still, I announced that I would wait in the car, as I wasn't sure my legs would carry me in and out, and I also didn't want to deal with the Bailiff and all the male shirtlessness again. Robert went in, and asked him how much we owed, and he said "oh I've no idea--I don't handle that. Just pay what you think is fair," so Robert came back out to the car to ask me what we had already paid and what we owed, and then we scraped together cash to pay the guy ("I don't suppose he takes Apple Pay," said Robert regretfully) and he handed us the crayfish from that morning, to add to our bag of fish fillets from the boat.
The guys suggested we drive down to the other end of town to the Continental, another Chinese-run fish and chip shop, where they charged for ketchup (cue Robert's indignation) but grilled up our blue cod, batter-fried the perch, and stir-fried our two crayfish up beautifully, one with ginger and scallion sauce and one with black pepper sauce. We had an absurd amount of food and couldn't finish it all, but the trip was clearly a success. I don't think any of the kids were seasick or frightened, much less both, like us, and they were all three totally happy the entire time we were on the boat and then eating our haul in the restaurant.
Stuffed, we walked back to a gift shop, Poppy's ice cream shop, and the little river overlook in town. Samantha admired the Christmas decorations and Marcus the wide array of trash receptacles.
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Created: 1/6/2020. Last Modified: 1/6/2020.