19/12/23 Tues: Drove to
On A Roll Bakery at 9+am after checking out of Bealey Quarter to buy our
breakfast for PotaTOH’s 2.5 hours’ drive to Kaikoura. The lady
boss is a Cambodian who happened to be flying home soon and she also planned to
make a 48-h pitstop in Singapore before that haha. I craved for a chocolate chip cookie but as
usual, it got too sweet after a while. He had egg and ham sandwich before we
drove off at 10am.
We arrived at the coastal town at 12.30pm and found the gem
of a place for seafood lunch at Kaikoura Seafood BBQ kiosk in the open! *Learnt
that Kai meant “food” and koura meant “crayfish”… so how can one not eat
crayfish here!* Potato
picked one crayfish and we had 1/2 of that (NZD 26)… together with the seafood
platter (NZD 58), it costed us NZD 84.The seafood platter had mussel, scallop, prawn, fish and
whitebait scrambled eggs with vegetable, bread and long grain rice. Though
expensive, the seafood were fresh and shiok! It’s a must-eat in Kaikoura.Drove over to our Airbnb at South Bay (S$271.86 for two pax
for two nights), a cottage attached to the owners’ just behind us. It was a
walking distance away from the sea and it was also near whaling stations in the
past. *From the paintings on
our Airbnb walls, Kaikoura was about orcas (they’re dolphins and not whales by
the way) , dusky dolphins and fur seals!*
At 3pm, we began our three-hour trek along the Kaikoura
Peninsula Walkway. We spotted ducks, fantail birds, seagulls, cows, seals on
the walk. It was a steep slope up from where we started at the West side, so I
took a break for photos too.Then, we crossed over to a private land where cows were abundant.
*The sun was scorching-hot but the wind was blowing at the same time…*
We did not see any whales from South Bay Viewpoint nor
Whalers Bay Viewpoint later, but decided to walk a 128-flight stairs down to
Whalers Bay. *We walked on top of the cliffs over to Point Kean, but along
the shoreline back… and the long stairs twice lol. A pat on my shoulder for
that man!*
The lupin we came across were very pretty too. After 1.5
hours to the east, we had to loop back. *came across a few seal carcasses*
Also knew about the shocking Kaikoura Earthquake in 2016 after reading up some
notices at Point Kean, so the shorelines were uplifted by 5m or so because of
that. Apparently, the fur seals had more rocks to rest on!Potato led the way while we were on the way back to the
long flights of stairs and he protected his arms from the lalangs by holding my
water bottle above his head haha~ *one small cow tried to “attack” us when
we passed the private land on the way back*
After the three hours’ trek, we decided to have dinner from
Street Eats Kaikoura, which sold Malaysia and Sarawak dishes. *The Most
Apple and Peach juice (NZD 6) was very nice.* We took away dinner and had
it at 7.45pm in our Airbnb. Their pork belly tacos (NZD 19.5) was good. The
coleslaw helped reduce the “jelak-ness”.
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