Thursday 21st February 2019 - to Kaikoura

On we go again, this time to Kaikoura, a coastal town about 3 hours north of Christchurch and a centre for whale watching, and other marine life.

We collected our hire car, and as we only have it for 3 days added a bit of insurance as we had to pay the excess for the flat tyre and the chip to the windscreen on north island. Not too much, but the additional insurance for 3 days is a lot less than the excess would be! And we have learnt that lots of New Zealand’s roads are being repaired!

It was an easy drive, just following route 1. The last 30 kilometres were very slow, because of all the road repairs and the repairs to the railway line that runs alongside much of it at this point. The repairs have been necessary because of the earthquake that hit this area in November 2016. It was a big one, 7.8, with 2 people losing their lives, and it caused lots of landslides, completely cutting off the town from all 3 of its access roads. As in Christchurch you can see the damage to some buildings and there is a lot of building work going on here too.

We spent the afternoon walking along the shore, both ways, to find out where to get our trip from in the morning, and to sort out somewhere to eat. Unfortunately this place does have the feel of somewhere that is struggling, and we assume that some of that is because of the effects of the quake and the loss of business as a result. What we did find though was a small bar/restaurant that had excellent WiFi enabling us to catch up with getting some photos on the blog! Unfortunately didn‘t have enough time to fully catch up, but never mind!

The setting here is beautiful though. A bay backed by mountains and the sea so blue in the sunshine.

Can’t download the photo again so will try and add it to tomorrow’s post!