Message Stick

The drive from Milford Sound in the far south west to Kaikoura in the north east winds entirely across the island is a 14 hour epic. To break things up a bit we spent a night in the small town Twizel (fo shizzle bizzle!), the residents pronounce it Twy-zel but we didn’t let that limit our Snoop Dogg impressions. As well as having a great name, Twizel is also only a stones through from Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. Unlike the high peaks we’ve seen in the  Himalayas and the Alps, Mount Cook is surrounded by a lot of flat land and lakes so you can get some great views without much effort (something we were both pleased to hear). We drove to the basecamp and walked to a glacial lake just at the bottom before burning on towards Kaikoura, for our much anticipated seal swim.

Decked out in super-thick, hooded wet suits we could barely breath due to the heat, let alone hike 20 mins to the seal colony. Getting in the icy cold water felt amazing for about half a second and then we were wishing our suits were twice as thick. With snorkeling gear and fins we swam out to were the seals were basking on the rocks and suddenly they were swimming around us, upside down, doing twists and loops. Occasionally they would swim really close to our faces and stare at us with their massive black eyes. After the initial amazement we started chasing them around until they led us too far out to sea to continue. Our guide found some Paua and cooked it up for us to try later that day. The locals call it black gold because it’s so expensive per kilo. We thought it tasted a bit too much like fishy mushroom to get overly excited by it.

After over 5100kms on the road, almost as far as London to New York, we finally arrived in Christchurch, our last destination in New Zealand. Noted as being more like England than England itself it was good to get a taste of home. With punting on the Avon river, lots of old buildings and parks we spent a day mouching around getting ready for our trip back to Oz for the outback adventure. When heavy rain on the window woke us up we’d decided that Christchurch was a little too much like home and felt a bit better about leaving such a great country.