New Zealand, Part 3
1 Dec 2004
After spending the night in Westport we drive east on NZ6 and the Buller River, to NZ69 south, through Reefton, along the Lewis River, and then on NZ70 to Kaikoura. In parts this was an amazing drive. There were many very steep grades on narrow two lane roads while going over mountains on the western part of this trip. In the states I think the maximum grade you'll encounter on almost any drive is 6-7%, meaning 6-7 feet of elevation change in 100 feet of travel. I think some of the grades we had to negotiate were 10-12%. Really steep ups and downs with a lot of switchbacks. Many of these switchbacks were almost completely blind, and I did a lot of driving in second gear. All the shifting up and down just wasn't worth the trouble. Lots of one lane bridges too, many with partially hidden entrances and exits. After things flattened out in the eastern part of the island I stopped to snap one of these bridges. This is an especially long, straight, easy to deal with example:
 |
 |
The goal in Kaikoura was to go whale watching Kaikoura was one of the places in NZ that I got the very strong feeling that I was someplace on the coast in California. It was in the low 60s, very sunny, and felt like coastal California in winter (although it was summer here). Kaikoura is a small town, and another of the "small shop" functioning towns that New Zealand is full of. The big business here is clearly recreation and tourism. Surfing, whale watching, everything.
Sharon has told me many many times that she wanted to go whale watching (Poke the "Sperm Whale" tag in that page.) .. so here we are. These are sperm whales, and we saw 4. The guides all have very sophisticated operations, and make several trips out per day. Once they have whales spotted on one tour they record locations with GPS equipment and then they can bring their next tour right to the last location and start looking. They have high success rates .. I got the sense that 4 sightings on a trip was their limit, since we then sped off to look at Dusky Dolphins, which are also very impressive, and nutty. The next 4 snaps are of the whales, then a couple of the dolphins.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
These snaps do not really do justice to the dolphins. There were probably 200 of them, and they were constantly shooting out of the water, leaping, flipping 180 in the air, doing all sorts of stunts. Pretty happy critters, I guess.
I have to say at this point that I was not in the best shape you can imagine after this trip out. We were on the water about 2 hours, and while it was not very rough, it was rough enough to drive me into the cabin after 30 min. and get me to wedge myself into a seat for the duration. I saw everything but could not be up and moving around. Oh well. I got some shooting done and Sharon took over.
After getting back to Kaikoura we spent a little time on the beach. A beautiful beach. Windy this day, but very nice. The water is cold.
 |
 |
2 Dec 2004
On the second we left Kaikoura and drove NZ1 north to Picton, then took the ferry to Wellington on the north island. Here are a few shots taken along the way. The first hour or so of this drive is all right along the coast and is spectacular. The water is still cold.
 |
 |
 |
Picton is the southern port for the inter-island ferries.
We had a few hours to kill in Picton so we went into the small museum near the ferry terminal that is dedicated to the sailing ship, the "Edward Fox'. This ship has a long and tangled history, and was at one time a slave ship. It had many other uses during it's life and wound up being used as a refrigerated warehouse for NZ lamb on its way out of the country, before finally being retired one last time. What was left of it (the hull mostly) was towed out and left to rot on the coast. A group of interested citizens raised money over a long period to eventually raise the ship, tow it into a drydock and stabilize it. There is now a small museum dedicated to the ship. I looked and I can't find a web site for this museum, which seems odd. Anyway, here are a few snaps.
 |
 |
 |
If I had known this hull was there to be crawled around in I would have skipped the dopey movie we watched about it and got my cameras in there a lot sooner. This was very cool to be inside and shoot. I am looking forward to seeing the film here. But I only had about 40 minutes to grab the gear and get in and get out before we had to leave for the ferry. Oh well.
So we're on the ferry ..
The trip across takes about 3 hours, and our particular trip was quite beautiful. About 1/3 of the trip is in what you could call open ocean, and you definitely pick up the long ocean swell. Since we were in such a huge ferry it wasn't really noticeable, but if we had taken the ferry the next day it sure would have been. The weather said that there were 7 meter (22-23 feet) swells, and that the ferries were running. This would have been a major Barf-O-Rama, I think.
Here are a couple of snaps taken on the trip. It was very windy and we watched the wind sweeping the tops off the waves and making big swirls in the water.
 |
 |
 |