2 January 2025

Once again, I was up before Pen, so I had my fruit salad and apple & cinnamon Greek yoghurt breakfast. Only interrupted by the sun shining on Kaikōura’s almost snowcapped peaks.

I had to go and get my camera.

I stood in the middle of State Highway 1 to get that shot!

Pen was still asleep, and I understood D.C.’s frustration whenever she’d see a lovely sunrise and I’d still be in bed and miss it. Fortunately, Pen did get up before the mountains decided to hide away for the rest of the day.

But it was only the first bit of things going our way today. Although, it was linked to much of it. We were told several times that this was probably going to be the best day of the week. The last two days were wet and the next two were predicted to be wet as well.

Once we’d both got ourselves sorted, we walked around to the EcoZip Adventure Kaikōura, getting there about ½ to ¾ hour early. There we got weighed in. (I’ve gained five kilos because I was fully dressed with a camera and phone in my pockets, right?) and I decided that, as we were going to be travelling in 4WD, that Seabands motion sickness bands might be in order. So I hiked back to our room, which only literally took five minutes. Plus, another five minutes for the return journey.

They had a full load of ten today, most of whom were paired off. There was a family of three – Mum, Dad (Simon), and daughter, and a single Asian man who were the odd ones out. I’d asked for a front seat for the ride (which, it turned out, wasn’t really necessary) and the EcoZip team were more than happy to help out. I got into my front seat of the mini-bus and we travelled out to Kaikōura Airport where we met up with our two guides – Alex and Mathilde. Alex is from Winton way via various tourist hotspots and Mathilde is a French-Canadian over here on a work visa. Both were fantastic at their jobs.

Before we were able to move on, Alex and Mathilde helped us get kitted up in our harnesses, helmets, and have a brief lesson in how to ride the zipline. They said that their focus is on safety first, and our enjoyment second, and they succeeded with both. The safety aspect was put across in such a way to be fun (if we come in for a landing with our legs stretched out, we’re likely to knock out Alex, in which case, this is what you need to do to use the radio to call for help.) We also had a demonstration about what to do and not do when descending the lines.

I have a suspicion that, from the airport, we were meant to be travelling in something like an army transport vehicle. We were meant to ford a river, but after the rain for the last two days, the water level was still too high for the mini-bus, so we went further on than the ford, drove across the State Highway, and parked in the shadow of what had to be rockfall protection barriers. (Probably installed sometime after the 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake. Here, some of us were installed in a ute, while Pen and I crawled into what I think they called the Polaris. This was a quad-bikey, four-wheel-drive with seating for four people and was fun to ride in.

But, naturally, with only being able to take four in the ute and two (we had a guide) in the Polaris, we had a bit of a wait for the rest of the team to join us. This wasn’t a problem as we were able to chat with Mathilde.

Finally, we were all together and shepherded into a larger “mini” bus and hauled up the hill to almost our first stop. I say almost, because we then had to walk, which included a stop to point out two toxic plants: the Tree Nettle/Ongaonga – which has been known to kill humans. And the other was the foxglove, which is probably better known. The reason why they permitted the ongaonga to remain close to the path, was because it was the preferred nursery plant of the native endangered Red Admiral Butterfly.

I think the ongaonga gives you plenty of warning that it’s not something to be messed with.

Finally, it was time to descend 380m – but not all at once. There were five ziplines, totally 2.2 kilometres in length, and each of them enabled you to zip down the hillside with a friend at your side. Or racing ahead of you, which tended to happen when Pen and I were ziplinging. So I’d try to “cannonball”, that is draw your arms and legs in to reduce the drag – and then decide that I’d rather the trip took longer instead of speeding it up. I did tend to spin a little, and it wasn’t until nearing the end that I finally managed to work out that a) it was easier to stop the spin with both hands (I only took video on the second zipline) and b) how to actually achieve this.

The usual way of beginning your descent was for Mathilde to count up to three. Pen and I (naturally) asked her to count down from five, at which point we would launch ourselves with a “Thunderbirds are go!” At the fifth run, she finally asked why, so I explained what Thunderbirds was, and then when we were at the bottom and waiting for the other zipliners to catch up, we had a chat with Simon, who was originally from England, about the joys of Thunderbirds and Supermarionation shows in general – and how we all wish we’d kept our old toys which would now be worth megabucks.

There was one run where I asked another couple if they’d like to swap descent partners for that run, so that we could all get photos and video of the other starting off and descending.

Once we’d all completed our fun, and pronounced that we’d like to go around again, we had to wait for our transportation to return. Apparently, the Polaris had got a flat tyre which needed changing, and had probably held up other tours. (They have three on the go at once.) This gave us time to stand, and chat, and see Australasian Harriers ride the thermals in the valley.

So we were lucky there.

Once we were dropped off back at our original mini-bus, we were taken back to the airport where we were divested of our harnesses and helmets, and got the gear we’d left behind back. This included my raincoat. I’d started out wearing a merino, a blouse, my jacket, and my raincoat to act as a windbreak. I did leave my raincoat at the airport and after we’d done all the walking between runs, I could have quite happily have left the jacket and merino behind too. Still, better to be safe than sorry, and I was concerned about the windchill factor.

Proof that I did it! Thanks for the photos, Pen.

My heart rate according to my watch.

So, how would I compare this to Coromandel’s Driving Creek Zipline? I am glad that we did that one first, as it was sort of a training run to get us up to speed for the main event. But, it did do some things better. You could hire cameras for your helmets or selfie sticks, which saved endangering your camera/phone. (You could buy bungees for your phones at Kaikoura.) Plus, for a couple of descents, your guides would take your photos as you leapt off, and these were uploaded to the Internet for you to download later. So, Driving Creek had better ways of recording memories, Kaikōura ZipLines had “better” ways of making them.

Driving Creek Zipline with Jan. Warning, it’s a long video.

After all that, we were ready for that long promised ice cream, so I had a fresh fruit mixed berry one. Yum!

After that excitement, we returned to Lazy Shag to offload our gear. Following that, as they’re predicting a 100% chance of rain tomorrow and it may be more pleasant indoors, we continued on to Emporium Brewing to book a slot for an escape room. We could have chosen “The Gangster’s Hideout” which was for people with some experience, and “Mystery at Shaw House School” for beginner/intermediate level. We figured that we were beginners.

Pen wanted a Kaikōura T-Shirt, so we did a bit of souvenir hunting, but the only one that she liked, they didn’t have in her size. So that was fruitless.

Having reached the end of town, we kept on walking. Walking along the foreshore and past Fyffe House.

Yes, I know it’s pink. Yes, I did consider painting my house pink. Yes, I did look at Fyffe House when I was considering painting my house. Yes, I did decide that the blue and white would look better.

But there is a reason why Fyffe House is pink and that’s because it originally was pink. It’s the oldest surviving house in Kaikōura and was lived in by the owner of the whaling station. The pink colour was because it was originally coated in whale oil mixed with (I think) creosote to protect the weatherboards.

They can’t be true New Zealand Pōhutukawa. They’re too intense in colour, and Pōhutukawa don’t naturally occur that far south.

Having decided against visiting Fyffe House, we continued walking until we reached the seal colony. Being summer, there weren’t many about, but we did get to see a couple… Who couldn’t care less about all these people who’d come to look at them.

Why have they got a picture of a parrot when they’re talking about gulls?

And then we had to walk back.

We had this problem the last time Pen and I visited Kaikōura. What was the best way to get back? Last time we had a Whale Watching trip to catch, so we took what was supposed to be a shortcut and turned out to be over a steep hill and with poor signage, only just making it in time. This time we stuck to the foreshore because we at least knew where we were going.

We had originally planned on returning to the Lazy Shag for a wash and to get dressed, but decided that we’d only be using up valuable time, so we went straight to the Strawberry Tree for tea.

Quite honestly, I think we both would have been happier going back to last night’s restaurant. The staff were pleasant enough, but we arrived there before our reserved table was ready. We were offered another table, which seemed fine, except that you had to order at the bar and the queue snaked right alongside our table. And it was noisy enough that it was hard to have a conversation.

I ordered BBQ smoked pulled pork shoulder seasoned in spicy sauce. This came with wedges, coleslaw, cheesy corn bread, pickles, and sauce. It was nice, but, as usual there was too much.

Pen ordered BBQ beef brisket. She was given a BBQ beef brisket burger. She got a replacement. This meant that I had to eat whilst she waited for it to be cooked. Then I had to wait whilst she ate it. Initially, she thought she didn’t have her corn bread, but it was hiding underneath the brisket. The wait staff were good about replacing her meal, but were expecting her to pay the difference, until she pointed out that it was their error (she’d even pointed to it on the menu) and asked that she not be charged that. The wait staff said the difference would come out of her wages and then clearly decided it wasn’t worth making a fuss over.

We went back to the Lazy Shag for a hot chocolate and to work on our blogs.

Steps = 31,266

Kilometres = 21.6