It started with a ferry transfer through the Cook Strait to the South Island. We were first welcomed by impressive Marlborough Sounds, and stayed there several days indulging the scenery and local wines. Our second few days stop was Kaikoura, a place between mountains and ocean we didn’t know a lot about beforehand, but which ended up exceeding all our expectations. And the third destination was Christchurch, the city infamously famous for several tragedies, but also full of hope and colors. Come with us to our one-week-journey along the East Coast of the South Island!
- Picton & Marlborough
- Kaikoura – mountains, ocean and marine creatures
- Easter in Christchurch
- How to get around
- Where did we stay
Picton & Marlborough
Picton is a small picturesque town overlooking the Marlborough Sounds, a network of valleys under the sea level with steep green hills rising from the water. According to the Maori mythology, these sounds are the prows of the sunken canoes of Aoraki.
Anyway, Picton is the first town to place your foot when coming by ferry from Wellington and it’s an awesome base when you want to try some local wine or do some more or less serious hiking in this region. We believe that such a combination won’t leave you disappointed. We only spent two nights but could easily prolong it by several days and wouldn’t get bored. Here are some of our best experience during this short time in the region:
Wine tasting
We visited Marlborough in mid April and since it’s the local Indian summer, Marlborough looks like a paradise. At least for us. Mountains, ocean, vineyards and soft early autumn sun. If George Clooney was in an ad for all of this, he’d probably use his sexy “What else?” ;)
We spent one nice afternoon tasting mostly local Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc in several trendy local wineries between Picton and Blenheim, the center of the New Zealand wine industry. There are many many amazing wineries and companies running the wine tasting day or half-day tours. We took Marlborough Wine Tours and can recommend them plenty.
Chilling at the seaside
The views from the shore toward the sea and Marlborough Sound are breathtaking. We spent a few hours just walking, taking photos and sitting around. If we came in summer we’d totally be putting on our swimsuits and jumping into the crystal clear water. It was still quite tempting :)
Hiking the Tirohanga Track
There are several longer or shorter hiking and biking trails and even some multi-day tracks (e.g. Queen Charlotte Track). We decided to take it easy and undertook only one short hiking trip – the Tirohanga Track – to get some pretty views of the town and Queen Charlotte Sound. The way through the town and a short climb up the steep path the regenerating native forest was nice and refreshing. And we even made friends with some local animals. Here you can find a useful map and also other tracks in Picton.
Kaikoura – mountains, ocean and marine creatures
Kaikoura Peninsula is the place where the mountains meet the Pacific ocean. And we must admit that this geologic meetup looks really glorious. Apart from the awe inspiring scenery and hiking options available is this place known for its rich marine wildlife. You can easily spot some fur seals, wild dusky dolphins as well as several types of whales. Sadly, this place used to be more popular with whalers than with whale watchers, but fortunately, the last whale was fished here in 1964.
We spent two beautiful days in Kaikoura (or Kaikoroora, as Pepe calls it) and they were full of activities and adventures. We took a whale watching flight to observe some sperm whales, swam with lots of beautiful dusky dolphins, saw albatrosses on the way and met fur seals in their colony.
Whale watching
We’re both fascinated by whales and watching them has been on our list of dreams for quite some time. Hence, it was a great opportunity to fulfill that dream in Kaikoura. Moreover, one day after we arrived in Kaikoura was Mia’s birthday. And she wished to party with some ocean creatures, so Pepe arranged it :)
Firstly, we wanted to join a whale watching boat, but after a recommendation from our hostel owner we reconsidered our options and opted for a supposedly more enjoyable whale watching flight. Despite some initial concerns about flying in a tiny plane low enough for us to see the whales we ended up signing up for it. Funnily enough it was also a bit cheaper than buying the boat tickets. Right after breakfast we were taken to the local airport, filled in all the papers and took off.
The views of the shore and mountain range and the whole peninsula were just unbelievable. Our camera didn’t play nicely with the reflection from the plane window and Pepe didn’t cope too well with all the “left make a left turn for 10 minutes now” thing, but all things considered, it was a success. We spotted three whales! We stuck with the largest one for the longest and it was perfect, doing all the whaley stuff and in the end gracefully showing it’s tail and diving into the deep ocean again. Wow!
Swimming with dolphins
Waters of Kaikoura are apparently very nutrient rich and therefore popular with a lot of marine wildlife. Apart from whales, there’re a lot of wild dusky dolphins jumping and playing around. And in Kaikoura you can simply go and swim with them, with real wild dolphins! It may sound silly, but this had also been one of our dreams, to swim with dolphins. And it was still part of Mia’s special day.
Our dolphin encounter was breathtaking, although very cold. The water temperature in April required some thicker 2 part wet suits with extra gloves and hoodies. Our guide explained how we’re supposed to jump into the water immediately after he gives us a sign. We were also told that dolphins like listening to people singing, preferably Dancing Queen from ABBA. We still don’t know if it’s true, but we liked the idea at that time and tried our best to sing to them through our snorkels. Maybe it worked because some of them came really close, like eye-to-eye contact. We jumped to the ocean and swam with these beautiful creatures five times during our trip. This whole cold experience was really awesome. And as a bonus, we got some tasty ginger cookies hot chocolate at our boat (against motion sickness? Pepe approves). Not bad at all :)
Hiking around the peninsula
Kaikoura is such a gorgeously beautiful place! In April it was still so green that we couldn’t believe it was autumn already. To enjoy it to the fullest we took an awe inspiring panoramic walk around the peninsula. The whole track was almost 12 km but very relaxing.
Visiting local fur seal colony
Apart from big marine animals, Kaikoura is also home to several fur seals. You can visit their colony or if you want, go kayaking and meet them in the water. We decided to have a walk and try to find them. Some were swimming in the sea, some just lying on the rocks and sleeping. Or were they sleeping? :)
Easter in Christchurch
After spending several amazing days hiking, wine tasting and meeting local wildlife, we continued further south and ended up in Christchurch for the Easter weekend. Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island and the capital of the Canterbury Region. It is also the second most populous city of the country.
The city looks very colorful but unfortunately, there were several sad events in the past: In 2010 and 2011, two major earthquakes hit the city, destroying or heavily damaging 80% of the buildings and injuring/killing lots of people. Another tragedy – a mosque shooting – happened just a month before we came to visit.
The consequences of those events can be still seen when walking through the streets. However, the city and its people have been successful in returning life into squares and destroyed places. At least that’s the impression we did get. We loved the street art, crazy architecture, gardens and free time meeting spots. So what did we do here?
Visiting Quake City and earthquake memorials
We already mentioned that we don’t usually fancy museums, but this one – Quake City – is once again a great exception. This interactive museum tries to present you the earthquakes that happened in Christchurch from several perspectives – first it teaches you something about these natural phenomena, how and why they happen. Then you can listen to the stories of people who remember those events and see the pictures of the destruction in Christchurch. In the final part you’ll see technical improvements or discoveries trying to minimize their consequences or prevent damage entirely. We highly recommend visiting this place once you are in the city.
In addition to the museum, there are several places to remember the big earthquakes. The official one – Canterbury Earthquake National Memorial – is located on the both sides of the Avon River. It is a place to reflect on both earthquakes and to pay respect to those who lost their lives, who were seriously injured and their families. The second, unofficial memorial – 185 empty chairs – is even more touching. Standing in front of these white painted chairs of various types, even baby car seats or bean bags, has a special atmosphere. This place is located just behind the colorful, triangle-shaped Transitional Cathedral, replacing the Christchurch Cathedral which was also seriously damaged in the 2011 earthquake.
Going for a walk in the Botanical Gardens
Christchurch is a very charming and romantic looking city, especially the older brick buildings surrounded by a ton of early autumn greenery. There are also beautiful Botanical Gardens in the city center that we really like. These are open from early morning to 9 pm, thus it’s possible to go for a swim in the green almost anytime.
Buzzing through the city on a scooter
Electric scooters as a mode of public transportation are becoming more and more popular in cities worldwide. Christchurch is not an exception, for better or worse. Since we’ve never tried to explore any city this way before we decided to give it a try. And it was fun, even though a bit expensive, as you pay for time spent with an unlocked scooter and the city is full of people and traffic lights and things you don’t want to hit. Also, you need to have the internet on your phone to be able to get rid of that scooter afterwards. This was a tiny problem for us since we relied only on public WiFi here, so we had to talk to some locals and kindly ask them for a hotspot :)
Here are some pics we managed to take in the city mainly when off the scooter. Lots of free-time spots and facilities for kids and families, street art anywhere, beautiful riverside promenades and city parks, cafes in pastel-color painted New Regent Street, romantic brick buildings and towers, historical tram and even something super special – check out the punting on the Avon! You can choose whatever, Christchurch has it all :)
How to get around
There are two ferry companies operating in the Cook Strait connecting the two main islands – InterIslander and Bluebridge; we picked the first operator. The ports are not far from the center of Wellington and there are buses from the Wellington Railway Station (platform 9) to the port departing ca 50 mins before each sailing. The 90 km journey between the islands takes around 3 – 3.5 hours and is really relaxing. You can enjoy breathtaking landscapes, especially the approach to the arrival port Picton through Queen Charlotte Sound.
From Picton we continued our travels by bus with InterCity. The journey from Picton to Kaikoura is approximately 2.5 hours and the same bus arrives in Christchurch after 3 more hours. The buses depart twice a day and you can book the tickets online or deduct the hours from the flexi pass as we did.
You can also try the train connection between Picton and Christchurch aboard Coastal Pacific. We reckon it would be a great experience as well but haven’t tried ourselves. Or you can drive. Your choice.
Where did we stay
Picton: We stayed two nights in a very cozy Sequoia Backpackers hostel with a very helpful personal and nicely equipped kitchen. The kicker – we got a chocolate pudding with ice cream every evening!
Kaikoura: Our home for two nights – Albatross backpackers – was one of the best hostel experiences we’ve had in New Zealand. The place felt very welcoming, was full of art and creativity and smelled of freshly baked delicacies. The owners were super friendly, gave us plenty of great tips for activities around, helped us with bookings and even gave us a ride to the local airport. And since they are passionate cooks they used to prepare a delicious common dinner and cakes for their guests with voluntary contributions afterwards.
Christchurch: We stayed three nights in Rucksacker. The hostel and rooms were nice, the kitchen was well equipped and the laundry machine running smoothly. However, no cakes this time (who are we kidding, there were cakes, we just had to peruse local cafes to get to them :)!
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