Kaikoura

This weekend was our first free weekend and we went to Kaikoura, a beach town. Most people did water activities such as whale watching and dolphin swimming but I took the road less traveled and did some hiking, cave exploring and 4-Wheeling. The bus picked us up at school on Friday after lunch and we all piled on with our backpacks stuffed for our weekend adventures. About half way to Kaikoura we stopped for a bathroom break and found out that the bus was "running a little hot" so we wandered around the little town of Chaviot for a while, had some tea and checked our e-mails. We ended up having a big group dinner there because fixing the bus was going to take a while. There was a nice resturant that offered to bring us platters of food for $10 per person. We had so much food we couldn't even finish it all! The resturant owner was so nice and was able to cater to both our vegetarians and our gluten free students as well. After dinner we hopped on the bus for the rest of our curvy and beautiful ride into the town of Kaikoura. Once we arrived we got checked in, picked rooms and headed out to explore the town. Six other girls and I ended up in a pub called the Strawberry Tree after we explored the stones beaches (where we found a family from the states who now live in Australia!). It was a nice bar with live music and creative drinks. We ended up getting a Naked Mermaid Tea Pot which we shared between the 7 of us and it was really cute and very blue! At somepoint throughout the night we were "descended upon" (as we described it later) by a bachelor party (or a stag party as they call it over here). They were a very interesting, and very drunk, group of men and made the night quite funny. Once we got back to the backpackers we hungout for a bit with some of the kids on our trip and then headed to bed. The next morning most of the people in my room got up to whale watch while I slept in a little bit (we all now consider 8am sleeping in a little!). Once up, I met up with a few other kids and we went to the bakery for breakfast and headed out for our morning of exploring. Our first stop was the i-site to get the locations of the aquarium (which we didn't end up visiting) and the limestone caves while stopping in shops along the way. We decided to head to the caves but weren't able to get there in time for the 10:30 tour, the walk was longer than we thought, and if we did the 11:30 we wouldn't have been back in time for 4-Wheeling. Instead we hung out on the stone beach for a while and headed back into town to do some shopping for souvenirs and to buy fabric to make letters once we get back home ( I am so excited about the patterns I got!). Once we got back to the hostel someone was there to pick us up for our 4-Wheeling trip. Riding an ATV through the mountains (and the owner's farm of sheep and cattle) was amazing! The views were fabulous and when you were on a flat pasture you could go so fast (Brian got up to 79 km/hour)! Not only was the scenery awesome but we drove through the sheep and cattle herds, which was really cool, and from one of the bluffs we stopped at we could see a big group of seals (Jt's camera has a pretty good zoom so I got some close ups of them). After we rode back down the hills we all showered and headed out for dinner where I had my first bowl of pasta since coming to New Zealand, it was delicious and long over due! The rest of the night was spent hanging out on the deck of the backpackers hostel playing games, dancing and listening to music. Sunday I was able to sleep in even more (9am!) before getting up, packing to leave (we left our stuff in lockers because we had to chek out by 10am but we weren't leaving until 3pm) and heading out for the day. Today we actually made it to the caves because we knew where they were and how long it took to walk there. We took a guided tour through the caves that was very informative and very cool (both figuratively and literally, it was 12 degrees celsius [roughly 50 degrees farenheit] in there). There were some really cool formations (including the Tooth Fairy's castle and a piece of bacon) in the caves, some of wich were tens of thousands years old. After we ate a delicious lunch at the cave resturant (I had steak and cheese pie) we headed back into to town where we bought popsicles and juice and waited for the bus. My weekend in Kaikoura was amazing and made me even more exctied for our trips to come!

 

The (man made) entrance to the caves (the natural entrance hasn't been found)

Flint deposits in the rock. It is extremely rare for them to form like this (the nomally form in seams or lines) and no one can explain why this happened. Our guide said it is unlikely we will see anything like this anywhere else!

They are yellow because of calcium oxide (calcite) in the limestone