The Tranzscenic Rail to Christchurch via Kaikoura

Wednesday 4^th April 2012

Dad and I were up early this morning, leaving the motel via taxi at 7:15. It was a quick drive through the centre of Wellington to the other side of the harbour. The check-in was much like an airport, for checking-in suitcases, although it was much more efficient. We then boarded straight away and found a window seat near the café! Unfortunately, due to the weather we couldn’t see much at all. The Kaitaki had 10 decks, although you could only roam a few of them. You could see a bit more if you stood outside, but it was still quite misty/rainy. The journey took 2.5 hours from Wellington to Picton and it wasn’t that bumpy.

On arrival in to Picton it was relatively easy to board the tranzscenic rail and the bags were transferred for us. The train to Kaikoura left on time and we stopped at a few places along the way. We get on the same train tomorrow and continue to Christchurch. The train views were very good, despite the weather. The open-air viewing carriage had the best views, but it was very windy and hard to keep hold of the camera! The train hugged the coastline for about 100km and had the best views, with a few seals along the way. As a treat, Dad and I had some pancakes on the train. They were heated up and came with manuka honey and cream, which were delicious.

We arrived at Kaikoura at 3:30pm and got a shuttle (taxi) to the youth hostel, where we are staying for one night. It is pretty basic, but it will do for one night. We are whale watching tomorrow morning, before boarding the train to Christchurch. We had some time this afternoon, so we chose to walk along to the seal colony at Kean Point. We found one fur seal on his own, about 500m or so from the rest of the colony.  I managed to get quite close (with picture evidence), without realising you should only get as close as 10m. We walked a bit further round the coast to the rest of the colony and I took lots of (quite close-up) pictures.

Walking back towards town, we stopped at a seafood shack on the side of the road. He had a whitebait fritter (sandwich with an omelette in the middle) and I decided to wait, as I didn’t want fish. For my tea, we stopped at the Pier House Hotel. It was obviously a bit dearer, but the food was amazing. I really enjoyed my “hog roll” and dad enjoyed a well-deserved beer. My hog roll was a huge serving of pork, crackling, apple sauce and gravy, with veg and potato. It was brilliant and was cooked to perfection. I also had a cheeky “homemade choc chip biscuit”, which was also amazing.

Thursday 5^th April 2012

This morning wasn’t such an early start, having to leave at 8:45. So sod’s law, I woke up at 6:30 and couldn’t sleep any longer. It was starting to look like it might be a nice a day, so we waited outside for the shuttle bus. We arrived fairly early to the whaleway station, which is also home to the whale watch tour. It is run by a sole company that have 5 custom made vessels in their fleet, resembling the size of most life boats.

As we had over an hour to wait until we could even check-in, we had some breakfast from the café and sat outside on their terrace. I had some bacon and eggs on toast, whilst watching the huge wave’s crash on the steep-shelved beach. We finished breakfast and still had time to spare. We locked up our bags and suitcases on the train platform, for our journey this afternoon and had a look around the visitor shop.

After a safety/information video and a 5 minute bus ride, we arrived at the other side of the peninsula, on South Bay. There were virtually no waves on this side, compared to the huge ones from where we had just come from. We had also been pre-warned to take sea sickness pills if we were known to suffer, as there were 2.5m rolling waves further out. I tried to briefly take some pictures of their fleet before boarding alongside the 20 or so passengers.

Inside the ship, on the lower deck were all the leather seats – which looked comfy! As we got out to sea, it soon began getting quite rough, causing queasiness among many of the passengers. I wasn’t feeling nauseous at the beginning, but mid-way through wasn’t too pleasant. We saw two sperm whales, one of which we saw on two occasions. This was pretty good, considering they dive for between 40-60mins on average before surfacing for oxygen! They were named “fingers” and “Tiaki”, which are recognisable by their individually unique tail fins. The whales off the Kaikoura coast are usually male and these are up to 1/3 bigger than females.

Coming back towards shore we saw some seals and dusky dolphins. We spent some time with the dolphins, which seemed to be more than happy jumping about by our boat! I was even lucky enough to see the rarest type of dolphin in the world - a Maui dolphin which is the same family as the Hector’s dolphin. Wikipedia tells me there is thought to be only 55 left, all off the coast of NZ.

Whale watching over we had some time to have lunch and visit a (reasonably priced) Paua souvenir shop. Two hours later, we were ready to board the 3:28 tranzscenic rail service to Christchurch. I slept for the first half of the journey after another early rise and another sleeping/motion sickness pill!

The train arrived in to Christchurch about 18:45 and the luggage came out on a conveyor belt, which was complicated enough, without the Germans and their complete lack of social awareness. We walked out of the station, suitcases in tow, to the bus stop outside. It wasn’t the number we wanted, but when asking the bus driver where our stop was, he kindly took us to the nearest stop (free of charge). After another short walk with our baggage, we arrived at the Jail House accommodation! It was a converted jail that used to be for women, back in the day. The rooms were the converted cells, complete with the old, (heavy) metal doors and bunk-beds! It is probably the coolest accommodation yet, with plenty of “jail wardens” to help you out.

After a quick freshen-up, we went out to find some food along Licoln Rd. We stumbled across a few places, (one being the Millers – took a picture for Rachel of course) but ended up at a Chinese. It looked busy inside, which is usually a sign that it is a good restaurant. I had honey chicken, with egg fried rice and as usual I couldn’t even think about finishing the portion! The highlight was the novelty of multi-coloured prawn crackers, alongside seeing Dad knock over a Chinese woman.

Me and Sammy the Seal!

Pod of dusky dolphins in the V formation!

Whale fluke in Kaikoura!