NZed and Sweet As

Andre the man

Now to continue on with our road trip around the south island. Our plan was to get to Picton and begin driving down the east coast, cut in around Christchurch, head in to Queenstown, head up to Milford Sound for a day then head back up the west coast, hit up Nelson and then get back to Picton for our ferry home. So our hung over sorry asses got into Picton and we began our journey after stopping by a market and picking up some groceries like bread, peanut butter and jelly and chips and such. Then we began heading down the East coast towards Kaikoura. Not a whole lot happened that day besides sight seeing along the coast. Then we came up to a spot where we could pull off and get a close look at seals, so we did.

While we were getting our close ups of the seals and having our little photo shoot some guys that were catching lobsters in the bay we were at got out and told there was something up the road to see. (I just want to add that they were literally swimming in the rocky shore where it looked like any wave could bash there body against a sharp rock and knock them the hell out, crazy as) I had no idea what he was saying because I was too involved with the seals and he had a pretty thick New Zealand accent if I remember right, but from what the others heard it sounded like there was something interesting ahead. So we got our last shots of the seals and headed up the road to another pull off.

At this stop there was a small hiking trail that headed back into the bush, so we started walking it. The trail ran along a small stream. As we were walking we suddenly saw a little roly poly ball of brown fur splashing in the water. It was a baby seal. So after we looked at that for like 10 minutes we continued on . . . and found another area that had like 5 baby seals. So we took another 10 minutes. They were dashing and flipping around occasionally coming up to the rocks to take a closer look at us, they were pretty curious little guys. Then we finally continued on until we got to waterfall that had a whole bunch of baby seals! These ones were also dashing and flipping around and occasionally one would leap out of the water. It was really an amazing thing to see. The baby seals actually head up the stream to the water fall while the mothers go out and eat. This is where they get to play and socialize in complete safety. It was incredible. I could go on forever about the seals so I'll cut it off right now. I did get some video of them but for some reason the format of the video won't load onto here.

We continued on along the coast until we got to Kaikoura. By this time is was getting dark and we had to find to place to camp. We stopped at a small shell shop where I got my mom a pair of Paua shell earrings. Then we drove on along the coast. This was our first night to find a place to camp and it was pretty exciting. Eventually we found a sign that said "Overnight camping is prohibited" so we pulled off and decided to make camp for the night. We were right along the beach and had some tree cover to hide us. We made a fire and roasted some dogs and then called it a night. Date was 4/9/12. Little did we know of the hell we would wake up to.