Kaikoura - Stunningly Beautiful

Posted July 27, 2012 by Martina Mcauley & filed under Travel Country: New Zealand.

30/1/2012

The last few times I was in Kaikoura I did the Whalewatch and the Maori Tour and this time around, I just wanted to do a few short walks. Kaikoura is stunningly beautiful, with the rare opportunity of both mountains and sea coming together to create fantastic dusk and daytime scenery. On my way into town, I stopped off at a patchwork quilt shop on Beach Rd. The quilts they have in here are beautiful. I loved the colours and designs. There was one hanging up, just inside the door and it was all colours of the rainbow. I would have loved to have had that on my bed.

I walked on to a pottery shop further up the road. There were some beautiful sculptures in this tiny shop. Some of them were made from clay but my favourite ones were the ones made from Oamaru stone, a limestone which is white but looks like it’s got grains of sand in it. The woman who owns the shop and who made the sculptures, Gail, said that the stone is very soft to work with and is good for outdoor sculptures as well as indoor. We got talking and she recommended that I try the Kaikoura Star newspaper office for work, as I told her I was looking for a job here in New Zealand, preferably as a writer.

I popped in there before I went to the i-site (tourist office) and they gave me the email address of the editor of the Marlborough Express. I also asked in the i-site if they needed staff and the woman I got talking to behind the desk, was Dutch. She said she’d been waiting for two years to get working at that i-site and that she still only had a temporary contract. So the chances of getting work there was slim. But at least I asked.

By this time, the sun was splitting the stones and I decided to take a walk out by the coast, to see if I could see any seals. Out by Kean Point, there’s a seal colony, so I walked up the coast road, by the Esplanade. My God, the view was stunning. There is a favourite spot of mine on the coast road that I love and to me, it’s heaven on earth! I would die happily on this spot. The pebbly beach stretches out before you and merges into the multicoloured blues of the sea, covered in a hazy mist and framed in the background by the mountains, dipping their toes into the sea. It was gorgeous.

As I was walking, a couple pointed out to me that there was a seal on the beach pretty close by. It was hard to spot because it was well camouflaged by the rocks. It was quite a big seal, asleep on its back on the sand. Nice to see it out in the open like this. The couple, Alan and Natalie, were from Christchurch and we got talking for a good while. They said that if I wanted a lift back to my accommodation that they’d be very happy to drop me back in their car, as they were staying in apartments across the road. It was a long walk back to the hostel and I decided on my way back to take them up on their offer. They very kindly dropped me back to the Lyell Creek.