Monday, July 25, 2016
I’m currently sitting at the foot of Mt. Fyffe blogging,
while the boys took off on a tramp. The
view is amazing because I’m sitting high enough on the mountain to overlook
Kaikoura, so I can see the town, farms, mountains, and the ocean. It’s a sunny day and a beautiful temperature.
Our lodging last night was absolutely perfect! We all got a great night of sleep and I’d
definitely stay here again if we ever found ourselves back in Kaikoura.
We had some change in plans this morning as we were supposed
to be on a 10:00 Whale Watching tour, but when we showed up they said it had
been cancelled due to rough seas. Now,
when you look out to the ocean, it looks like calm water as far as the eye can
see, but…we’ll take their word on it.
So, we were given the option to rebook for a 1:15 time slot when they
hoped the seas would calm down a bit, or take the helicopter tour to see the
whales. We decided to rebook for the 1:15 tour and I’m praying that we’ll get
to go because we REALLY want to get this opportunity.
Since we’d geared our morning towards being on a boat, and a
lot of mental prepping for myself after yesterday’s boating experience it was a
little disappointing to say the least.
We drove back to the town centre and had some breakfast at The Pot Belly
Bakery/Café. I’m getting used to a warm
cup of hot chocolate at each meal which is so delightful. We all shared a quiche, raspberry white
chocolate chip muffin, and an apple turnover.
The food tasted better than it looked in the display case, which was
good, but there’s always something just slightly off with the food taste, we
can’t quite put our finger on it.
Woodrow continues to want to sample each plate of food, which is
hilarious to me since he’s generally a picky eater, so I love that he wants to
try all these different foods that he sees.
After breakfast we figured we would drive around to try and
find a destination to hang at until our tour.
While this town has been beautiful for the scenery, there aren’t as many
“attractions” and we put all our coins in the whale tour for this one, so we
headed towards the mountains where we found the road leading to the Mt. Fyffe
Forest Walk. The trail sign says it’s a
2 hour walk and about 2.3km. I started
out with the boys, but quickly realized that my mood was definitely not in it
and the hike was a steady incline up which frankly I just wasn’t up for mentally
or physically (I think BK3 is trying to escape my body-not really), so I
decided it would be better for everyone if I just hung out behind. I’m still soaking in the fresh air and those
three will have a great time exploring and hiking up the mountainside. Hopefully Mason will pay attention to the
time and make it back to the car in time for the whale tour.
Alrighty, continuing on from the morning. Theo returned after about 45 minutes, which
threw me off since I was expecting the boys to be gone hiking another
hour. I heard his little voice and was
surprised to see him racing down the hillside red-faced and out of breath…Mason
and Woodrow were also nowhere to be seen.
I questioned Theo over and over…you’re sure Dad knows you came down the
mountain? They weren’t hurt right? Are you sure Dad and Woodrow didn’t keep
climbing up? Sure enough they appeared
within 10 minutes and had just taken a longer time to climb down, plus they
stopped to see two cows. Apparently
while the walk was a nice one, there weren’t any spectacular views.
We stopped at a grocery store in town before heading back to
the Whale Watch center and it was one of the nicer ones we’d been too. We picked up several apples and bananas which
we all needed after so many days of just eating on the road…now we also picked
up several different treats, but I swear the food is just better in the US. We
decided to head back to the Whale Watch center a little early to see if they
had more information on the tour they booked us on for the afternoon and
unfortunately it was cancelled.
Grrr! The day was turning out to
feel a disappointing and frustrating, mostly because when I was planning out
the itinerary and once we arrived in New Zealand it had occurred to me that
maybe we should have a backup plan for if we didn’t get to do the tour on the
day as planned. Kaikoura has been one of
my favorite towns for the scenery, but there aren’t many other things to do in
the town. We were supposed to be heading
to Christchurch this evening for two nights and like most of our hotel bookings
for this trip you had to cancel 72 hours in advance…so we didn’t want to stay
in Kaikoura and be out money for the cancellation, plus money for a hotel in
Kaikoura, so we decided to get booked on the Tuesday morning Whale Watch tour
and head to Christchurch for the night (2.5 hours away).
By this point in the day we were all pretty tired and
disappointed and had a drive ahead of us.
The kids were asleep within 5 minutes of driving down the road. The trip between Kaikoura and Christchurch
was a very pretty one. The first hour
was especially nice, but I was gripping my hands to the steering wheel as I was
driving. The first 30 minutes is right
along the ocean and is breathtaking! The
water breaking upon the blacksand and rocks, and the large cliffs in the
distance. Then we made our way up the
mountainside with lots of greenery and winding roads. The smell is also so nice because many of the
farmers have controlled burns going. It
just smells like Fall, my favorite time of year! The remainder of the drive was through farm
land and a few small towns.
Mason took over the driving about an hour outside of
Christchurch while I passed out for a nap.
When I woke up he had navigated us to the Margaret Mahy Family
Playground. What a fun spot! While I try to balance fun activities for all
of us on vacations, sometimes the simple reminder that the kids are just happy
playing at a park is a nice one. The
parks within the cities in New Zealand and Australia are awesome! They have fun activities, are clean, and feel
safe. The boys enjoyed climbing on “rock
walls”, sliding down large slides, and the most fun activity was this kid size
zip line. Seriously, so fun! The best part was then Theo would hit the end
and look like he was going to fly off!
Haha! Mason and I also took a few
turns…after all, it was a family playground.
Oh, and the public toilets there…so fun.
It was all electronic from the door locking to hand washing, and music
even played during your allotted 10 minutes.
Mason said, you’ve got to go take a video of that bathroom…so you know
it must have been cool.
Then the dreaded dinner search. I’m not sure why this is so challenging, but
it is. At the end of the day we just
want to find something tasty, not too expensive, and not after driving for 2
hours. So many places are either fast
food, take out, are fancy, closed for winter, or we just can’t find
anything. We eventually found a place to
park in downtown Christchurch and walked around a few blocks in search of
food. Ironically we bumped into a lady
who I had been talking with at the park and she pointed out a few places in the
area. We headed towards the Mexican restaurant,
which ended up being good, but again fancier that what we wanted. It was called Mexico and was tapas style, so
basically expensive and small portions, so we grabbed a few different things to
share and headed back to our hotel room for the night.
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