Another party – Tomas had name day yesterday and we another reason to celebrate. It means we went sleep today and woke up around 9am. Eggs and bacon for breakfast – that sounds really good and can just help. At 11am it is almost time to hit the road – direction Hanmer Springs.
We did first stop at Reefton
, nice small city, where we had fish&chips for lunch and lemon cake as dessert (of course we didn’t wait between these two meals). It wasn’t easy to find place where we can have lunch as all of them closed at 2pm and were opening again at 4:30pm. But we managed it and the lunch was really huge.
On the way there I just spotted petrol station, where they wanted an arm for petrol and a leg for diesel, which I found quite funny. Few more kilometers to Lewis Pass, where we walked just above bush line and got pretty wet as the rain were stronger and stronger. It was good for figure so we didn’t mind even we weren’t able to see anything from the top.
Just at the end of Lewis Pass is small thermal lakes next to the river, where we wanted to have a bath. They were nice, with some didymo inside, but really small – for one or two not for five as we needed. Another short ride and we came to Hanmer Springs, where are official hot pools. But, it was 8:30pm and they were closing at 9pm – not a lot of time, especially when they still wanted 14$ for entry. No way, will find another hot pools on North Island and went to Kaikoura instead.
We arrived quite lately, had quick dinner and went for sleep, morning Sun should wake us up early enough for whale watching.
And we really woke up early enough to see some dolphins swimming around and have breakfast in morning Sun. Then we went to pay for the campsite and I, just for fun, asked for some discount as we spent there just half a night. And I got it – sweet.
Whale Watching at Kaikoura was great. They just had to cancel morning cruise and were a bit busy when we arrived, but because of that we got on boat almost immediately. The ocean was rough, which means a few meters high waves and the boat made really nice splash of water as we went to the ocean. After a while we saw our first whales – two of them actually. It is quite unusual and we even saw both of them dive together, which is like miracle.
Usually they spot one or two whale per tour and we were lucky enough to spot another one just shortly after rise up, which allowed us to watch it for about 10 minutes. The sperm whales (which we saw) are really huge and nice, the breathing is interesting but I liked more the diving part, when the tail go to the air and slowly disappear.
We saw a lot of birds as well and when we arrived back to pier we saw seal just posing for us – really nice.
And it was time for another lunch – this time we found BBQ and had some chicken steaks we bought earlier. They were pretty good and the weather was good as well, so it was really good lunch.
What to do next, before our ferry departs from Picton (about 2hours drive)? Time to go to peninsula, where is a lot of sea live and nice views. And it was really nice, just when we got to middle the rain started and we were wet in a few minutes. Again (it must sounds like an advertisement) I was lucky to have my Axon jacket, as I was dry under it, which was fantastic.
Time to move to Picton. It shocked me a bit when I was overtaken by truck with extra wide load – he didn’t care to much about others and went really quickly. We also saw an awesome rainbow, with rich colors and after a while there was another one just next to the first one. Beauty.
In Picton we had quick dinner, enjoyed local modern toilet (as they have in Darwin, Australia) and it was time to catch the ferry, enjoy the 3 hours cruise and find some nice place to sleep (which we did at around 3am). Long and fantastic day.