April 23rd, New Zealand Day 8

This day was spent travelling from Christchurch to Nelson, a city on the northern side of the South Island. Most of the day, though, was spent in the coastal city of Kaikoura (kay-KOOH-rah), which means "Prawn Feeding" in Maori. To this day, the waters off Kaikoura are filled with prawns and whales because the larger mammals feed on those smaller marine animals. In this place it is also possible to swim with dolphins and go seal watching; I chose the latter option.

I, and a few other like minded people, were dropped off on the Kaikoura Peninsula, just south of the city. We were told to walk along the shoreline to get the best views of the seals but to stay 10 meters from them at all times. Seals are very friendly and playful in the water, their natural environment, but on land they can be quite aggressive. I think this is a bit unusual since a seal's natural predators, such as sharks, all live in the water. Apparently, they can be quite quick on land and I decided to carry a rock with me just in case one of the seals got belligerent.

The group I was in, about 6 of us all together, began walking along the shore, which is very similar to Canada's east coast. I took a few photographs of the mountains whose peaks had received some snowfall the night before. Anyway, myself and another guy were walking ahead of the group when all of a sudden I hear barking on my left. I turned, and there was a seal lying no more than 3 meters away from us. We slowly backed-off and then looked around and noticed that this was a seal colony. It was like walking into a minefield and there were many seals lying on the rocks in the surrounding area. We carefully negotiated the seals and made our way around the peninsula. There were several areas where seals congregated along our route but we managed to side-step them all the way and nothing ill transpired. Sometimes it was a bit more difficult because of the terrain, which has some interesting features. It would later turn out that the reason we would had to tread so close to the seals, at some points less than 2 meters, was that our tour guide had failed to take into account the tide, which had come in, and so the seals were much higher inland than normal.

We were picked up on the other side of the peninsula where we got a great view of the high Seaward Kaikoura Range. We then picked up the others from their various activities and then departed for Nelson. Along the way, we stopped and I got some pictures of another seal colony with seal pups playing in a pool of water.

We arrived in Nelson after sunset. Nelson, named in honour of the great British admiral Horatio Nelson, is also the city where New Zealand's first railway was built. Ironically, Nelson is no longer served by the main railway lines and it only has a small local railway for tourism purposes and the namesake of the city suffered from acute seasickness, though never in combat. It also has a cool Mediterranean climate which was evident by the many palm trees that grow in the area. It is also the city where Ernest Rutherford, a famous physicist and New Zealand native, spent a good deal of his life. He was actually born in the tiny town of Brightwater to the south of Nelson and educated in Havelock, another small town near Nelson. He received his highest education in the U.K., though.

Because it was so late when we got in, we were taken directly to our hotel, which sat not too far from the beach. That night, our dinners consisted of ordered pizza from a local Pizza Hut, I think. Actually, we did not stay in Nelson but in the suburb of Tahuna (tah-HOO-nah), officially called Tahunanui (tah-HOO-nah-noo-ee), to the west of the city.

Photos are now available at: http://newzealandday8.blogspot.com/