By the next morning, Jim was feeling good enough to keep our trip moving as planned. I called ahead and got an extra hotel room for him in each of the places we were staying and we thought it would be ok for us to all mask up in the car and drive with the windows down. We had our final morning of home-cooked deliciousness (pancakes and toast this time) and headed out around 10 am.
Before heading down to Kaikora, Jim dropped us off to wander through the Nelson Market where we found a stand selling the beeswax covers we came for and one selling Rachel’s favorite peanut butter brand: Pics. We had passed by signs for the Peanut Butter World, but I hadn’t followed them, but now I wish I had. Unfortunately it was in the wrong direction so it is something for the next time.
For the first half of our drive it was not sunny, but at least not raining, and we got to enjoy the beautiful terrain. We stopped for a quick walk to Pelorus Bridge, a suspension bridge, and enjoyed a delicious curry lentil pie in the parking lot.
It was definitely difficult driving these long distances, all four masked.
We drove on to The Shop for lunch and tried to walk outside to enjoy the beauty, but it was really wet and windy — a little miserable out there.
Jo had suggested we stop along the way to see seals and some place that she couldn’t quite remember but started with an O. We came across Okiwi and pulled in assuming that was it — there were no seals there but the girls got soaked looking!
Just a bit further up the road, we hit Ohua, and voila, seals galore! We didn’t even need to search.
One of the main attractions in Kaikora specifically is swimming with dolphins. We hadn’t made any reservations to do that, and what was available now was to ride in the boat and watch others swim with dolphins. We felt super conflicted about that. Clearly not something I wanted to do and we didn’t feel great about Jim doing something with others, so it would have been the girls going alone. They felt conflicted about it, so we all felt reassured knowing that the boat trips were sure to be cancelled because of the terrible weather.
We also planned our trip relatively late so there were limited options for places to stay along the way — but we kept our choice in Kaikora a secret. Jim and I just thought Wacky Stays seemed like too fun to pass up. We had reserved a night staying on a train car that slept four. We could have stayed in a wagon, a teepee, etc. I got Jim a two-room cottage (the least wacky place) to keep him separate from us. Checking in was Wacky too —when we finally tracked down the guy who runs the place, he was decidedly not wacky, just a little sad seeming — but the place was funny. He showed us through our accommodations detailing the history of each but made it clear he preferred not to be disturbed after that.
We left Jim there and went into town for dinner. We drove to the end of town and walked out on some rocks but didn’t see much — others were walking around the corner but we had no idea what was there (little foreshadowing!). We found a some really average pub food (and ordered way too much bread!) but enjoyed sitting by the fire outside, playing cards, and watching tennis while we waited for it. We got talking to some locals (actually two from France, one from Brazil, who now live in NZ) who were in the area because they were organizing New Zealand’s answer to Burning Man nearby. They were doing a three-week build for their five day event for 2500 people. They could not stop talking about how beautiful Kaikora was; I was sad that the cloud cover made it impossible to see what they were talking about. We wanted ice cream and ended up getting a Carmelo bar at a local Dairy (like 7-Eleven).
We brought food to Jim and headed back to the train. We got a lot of laughs pretending to be on a moving train and it was the perfect setting to play some Nancy Drew before bed. Rachel opted to take the Thomas the Tank Engine bottom bunk, leaving the double bed for Julia and me. I can’t believe they let me reserve this train for four — it would have been tight!
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