Kaikoura

The Coastal Pacific train runs once a day, and takes six hours from Picton to Christchurch, which is a long time without wifi for three teenagers.  Fortunately it allowed a stopover in Kaikoura, and by "stopover" I mean you could get off and catch the next train 24 hours later.  Or in our case, 48 hours. (Oddly, it was cheaper to break the train journey into two segments.)

As I mentioned, although Kaikoura is a small town, it is a huge tourist destination because of the Hikurangi Trench. Much like the canyon at Monterey Bay, Califonia, the Hikurangi Trench directs nutrient-rich sediment which supports abundant wildlife including crayfish (rock lobsters), dolphins and whales. (I later learned the best time to visit was autumn; during the summer only male sperm whales were present.)  The town has a permanent population of about 3,600 people, it can see 900,000 tourists in a year!

Humorously, I booked the ferry and train first and then discovered there was no accommodation in Kaikoura that could accommodate the five of us.  There wasn't even a hotel with two rooms free! Since the kids were already bringing sleeping bags, I suggested we bring tents and sleep on the beach, but my partner pointed out the kids were already packing for nineteen days and would not have any more space.  In the end, I found a motel room that slept three but looked like it could hold five. I once smuggled a six-foot iguana into a motel, so I figured two kids would be easy.

Needless to say, everything that could go wrong, did.  It wasn't a motel per se, with independent access for each room, but instead you had to go through the lobby, past the receptionist, into a courtyard, and our room was on the second floor.  We had a small mountain of luggage -- the kids each took a large suitcase, a big duffel bag, and a sleeping bag -- and the shuttle dropped us right in front of the lobby.  I had hoped there would be no need to tell the kids about my duplicitous plan, so of course they started unloading the luggage in full view of the receiptionist!  I immediately suffled two of them out of sight, but as I was checking in I looked up to see one of the kids skateboarding around the parking lot!

(That my partner let him bring his skateboard is a whole other discussion...)

I found a back entrance so I sent my partner and one kid through the lobby and took the other two kids around back.  Just as we were comng in, the receptionist was coming out to help another couple, who spoke no english.  Thankfully, the eldest had cottoned on to what was happening and immediately split off and went elsewhere, dragging the youngest with her.  I knew he was getting upset -- like his mom, he does not like being dishonest -- so I needed to get him inside quickly before he made a scene.  The eldest went up another staircase but found it did not connect to our room, so we found ourselves making hand signals at the top of the stairs while the receptionist was standing below us, oblivious.  You could not make this stuff up.

The receptionist finally went back inside and the kids went downstairs and back up the correct stairs and when we were finally in the room I explained what was happening.  I almost had the youngest under control when my partner flipped out and demanded, in front of the kids, I go tell the receptionist what was going on.  Perhaps I could have negotiated before I'd paid -- she wouldn't want the room to go unoccupied -- but at this point she could have turfed us out and kept the money, so I wasn't going to do that.  After a few minutes of heated arguing -- again in front of the kids -- I went out.  The two older kids, who inherited their level of honesty from their father, went with me.  The youngest was hiding under the bed.

Needless to say, we did not go out to dinner that night as planned.  Instead we invited the kids to pick over what was left from the picnic lunch we'd brought on the train.  I'd picked up some milk so I think one of the kids had cereal.  It was an unceremonious start to the holiday.

The next day, after a good night's sleep, everyone was a bit calmer.  We had breakfast in the room (it had a kitchenette) then we all went out the back entrance and walked into town.  After a bit of shopping, we checked out every cafe on the high street, but being a coastal town founded on seafood, finding something vegetarian and gluten free proved elusive, which is how we ended up in a sushi restaurant.  The little old Japanese lady was hand-rolling to order, and it turned out to be the best sushi I'd had in New Zealand.

We then walked back to the train station, which is where the whale watch tour departed from, but they were cancelling trips because of rough seas, including ours.  The kids were gutted, but I remembered the helicopters and walked over to see if they had any spaces.  It was twice as much as the boat, but my partner and I didn't think we could stomach a helicopter ride anyway, so we just booked the kids.  The helicopter people then told us they were only tracking one sperm whale, that they tend to dive for about 45 minutes, that the helicopter ride was only 40 minutes long, and there were no refunds.

Forty-five minutes later, after a "safety briefing" that literally featured plastic models of whales and a giant squid, they boarded the helicopter and flew off into the distance.  We asked the folks who had just gotten off the helicopter how it was, and they told us they hadn't seen a thing.  We were gutted.

Thankfully, the kids not only saw the sperm whale, but watched him dive as well.  (After floating on the surface for 15 minutes, he arches his back and goes under, then comes up one last time to expel any air [so his lungs don't explode in the depths] and dives at a steep angle, which is when you see the famous "whale tail.")  They also saw a massive nursery pod of dolphins and a bunch of fur seals.  I'd given them my SLR and they'd taken so many photos, they'd filled up my memory card, which is something I'd never done in ten years!

We went back to the hotel and celebrated by making nachos in the microwave for dinner.  (I should note that neither my partner nor I have owned a microwave in the past thirty years, so we aren't very experienced with it and the nachos were...interesting.)  We packed our bags so we'd be ready to check out early, as we had a big day the next day.

I should probably note, to avoid any pretence of a "Facebook family," that the children were absolute snots.  If we weren't actively buying them something, they were being rude and obnoxious.  Of course, it wasn't all three of them all the time, but at least one or two were being unpleasant at any given point.  I kind of expect that from teenagers but my partner takes it very personally, and so there was a good deal of yelling, which is when I have to get involved to let the kids know, in no uncertain terms, that mom can yell at them all she wants and they are not to yell back.  I don't like being the big bad bear -- it does affect my nerves -- but it's an unavoidable part of parenting teenagers, especially on holiday.  Everyone was getting a bit frayed, and it was only day two of nine.

The next day the shuttle arrived at 7:45am.  I'd already secreted all the luggage around the back and the kids had all snuck out around the back, which turned out to be for nothing because reception didn't open until 8:30am!  The shuttle took us back to the train station to stash our luggage for the day, and then dropped us off at Kaikoura Kayaks, which was going to take us on a "half-day expedition" to see fur seals.  However, that half day turned out to be mostly waiting for people to show up, driving to the drop-off point, going through safety and rowing demonstration, getting dressed and launching the kayaks.  In the end we had about an hour on the water, but that was more than enough for my old bones.

The weather was perfect but, not knowing any better, I'd opted for a waterproof parka along with the neoprene skirt and life vest.  After 20 minutes I was overheating, and it was a lot of work paddling around the surf.  Thankfully, once we got to the seal community we could relax for a bit, and watching the seals (actually a type of sea lion) in its native habitat was exhilirating.  Coming back was when we found out how the earthquake had affected the area: It was high tide at the time, and the guide said that was the equivalent of low tide before the earthquake.  That is, the sea bed had risen so much that features that used to be submerged all the time were now only submerged at high tide!  Of course the irony is that since it was high tide at that time, it looked the same as before the earthquake...

We finished at noon, had a bite to eat, my son said he was going skateboarding at a little skate park and the daughters said they were going shopping.  This was good because they'd been snots again all morning and my partner was plotting how to leave them in Kaikoura while we continued the holiday.  We went to the local ice cream shop (there's always a local) and tried to relax.  Within five minutes, we were getting barraged with text messages: Our son had spreained his ankle and the girls wanted our credit card details. We ignored them.

(To be fair, if our son had actually sprained his ankle, he would have called us, not sent a text; he just doesn't know the difference between twisting and spraining.  We caught up with him later and he was fine.)

The train was due at 5:20 but at 3:30 I got a text it was running 40 minutes late.  Unfortunately we'd run out of things to explore so we all ended up at the train station, on our phones, waiting for two hours.  It had been a very warm day, and coming from Wellington we weren't used to the heat, so we were all feeling a bit miserable.  We had free wifi and I was able to have a video call with my niece, which is the first time I've "seen" them since our visit 18 months ago.  Of course, just as we were talking, the train pulled in.