After a long day of driving, and the sketchiest road EVER (Queen Charlotte Road..ridiculously windy, and dark.. YUCK!) we stayed the night in Nelson and headed off to Kaikoura. The South Island is incredibly beautiful, and despite the fact we drove SO MUCH over our 13 days in NZ, it was worth it to see the beautiful country.
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| Coming in on the Ferry :) |
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| Too true. |
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| Quick break from driving to get some air and check out the scenery. |
KAIKOURA
After free waffles and mocha (the breakfast of champions...), we left Nelson and headed to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is on the east coast and is small town with whale watching, a seal colony and many interesting walks. We wandered around town, then hit the Seal Colony and the Peninsula Walk.
The Seal Colony WAS INSANE!! We read that Seals would be visible but we had no clue how close and how many there would be. They were EVERYWHERE! Some were just basking in the sun on the wooden footpath. Nuts.
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| View from the Seal Colony. |
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| The older, and grumpier seals. |
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| Albatross Birds. They are MASSIVE in real life. |
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| Happy to see the Seals!! |
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| Our new friend! This guy kinda followed us and hung out with us while we were there. |
The Peninsula walk was awesome as well. We were up on the cliffside looking out @ the ocean. There were hundreds more seals on the rocks below and many awesome landscapes.
CHRISTCHURCH: RESTART MALL
We drove from Kaikoura to Christchurch and hit Restart Mall and the Earthquake site in the CBD. The mall itself is made out of old storage containers and is right in the heart of all the earthquake's devastation. Even though it happened in 2011, there is still tons of damage and work to be done. We wandered around the mall and then drove to Sumner, a great suburb on the coast. It had the most beautiful beach and great surf.
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| Lil chilly on the coast... definitely keeping our hoodies on and not diving in today!
DUNEDIN
After Christchurch we drove to Dunedin and walked around the CBD. It is a really cool place with lots of shops and restaurants.
At 2pm we went for our Cadbury Chocolate tour. To be honest it wasn't the greatest...being that it was a Saturday we didn't get to see too much but we did learn a bit and see a few things. BUT we did get to see 1 ton of Liquid Chocolate drop 200ft, so that was pretty neat and we got some free chocolate as well :)
        
The next day we got up and hit
THE WORLD'S STEEPEST STREET.....
Yup that's right, we were just about to leave our hotel and the receptionist said "Have you seen the World's steepest street yet?" and so we decided to tackle it. The street itself was MAD! It had stairs on both sides and signs warning cars not to drive up if they weren't totally sound.
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