C: You know, it’s kind of creepy here in the parking lot.
M: Why?
C: Well, there’s another car and a camper right here next to us. Both have their lights out. Nobody cooks or does anything. Who knows who’s in that car in the dark. I find it creepy walking to the toilet.
That’s how the first evening on the South Island of New Zealand begins. The next morning the alarm clock already rings at sunrise. Here in the New Zealand winter the daylight hours are scarce. The night was quite unexciting in our “opi”, as we have named the camper, without burglars or anything else. “Opi” (grandpa in German), because he looks like a bald guy with two ears when the sun shines on him from behind.
And what we can only imagine at night, is now laid out in front of us at the beginning of the day: a big lake directly in front of our camper. With ducks and hilly grassland on the other side. Ohhhh so beautiful. Just make some tea, eat some cornflakes and off you go. An hour drive to Kaikoura separates us from sperm whales. Hopefully. So we meander along the coastal road. On the left the sea, on the right orange hills, in front snow-covered mountains. Oh, man. The sun continues to rise. Road works. GO SLOW. STOP. Here in New Zealand there are very rarely traffic lights at road work construction sites. Usually a real person stands and alternately holds the STOP or GO sign in the direction of travel. And we’re waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Oh, look, Conny, seals! Right, next to the highway, right on the rocks at the shore lazy seals are chilling out. Fur seals, as we will learn later. Many of them. GO. The human traffic light beckons us friendly. We may go on, but we don’t want to, because looking at seals is also nice. The journey continues. Punctually at 11 o’clock we start: safety briefing for the speedboat, then we get on the boat quickly and off we go. We sail at high speed to the open sea. It’s very windy. And there we wait off the coast. High waves really rock our boat. And then pffffffffffff. A fountain. That means: WHALE!!!! We approach at high speed, but not too close. We want to see it, but not disturb it. And there it poses in all its majestic grandeur. Sperm whales can dive for 45-60 minutes without breathing. Then they come up for 5-10 minutes, refill their blood and lungs with oxygen and then submerge again. But just before they disappear into the deep sea again, they show themselves again with their head, then their curved back, and at the very end you can see how their tail fins wave goodbye. We can marvel at the whole procedure four more times. These giant whales are as high as buildings. Awesome! I’m bursting with happiness! On the way back to the harbor we see some very small dolphins. We met dolphins in Iran, then several times in Indonesia. They’re travel mates now, I think.
We disembark and have a little snack on the coast. Fresh fish in a sandwich. Hmmm. Yummy. Then the journey with Opi continues westwards into the interior of the island. To a campsite that should have a nice view. And yes, woahooo. It has. We’re in the Alps. On hiking holidays in Austria. And the owner of the lodge is super nice. He recommends us to go to the lookout point. You can see the snow-covered mountains on one side and the sea on the other. We’re just supposed to ignore the cows.
So the planned relaxed afternoon in the meadow with a book … canceled. We walk through the first cattle gate, and there they come towards us, the cows, and look who’s visiting now. When a whole herd approaches, it frightens me quite a bit. We hurry to open and close the opposite exit gate. We did it. There’s a smaller river we have to cross. Quickly we find a transition further up. Then we have to cross the river again. Also no problem. We put rocks from the shore as steps in the river and are quickly on the other side. Then we don’t see the trail anymore. We have to go up the mountain. But how? There are cattle trails. And where’s the real trail? Hmmm. The sun will soon set. We’ve got an hour or less left. Come on, let’s just climb up here. The direction is right. I’m wearing my mountain trekking shoes. Matthias sports shoes. We wind our way up the mountain. Matthias says again and again: things are going well uphill. But how do we get down? I’m rushing uphill. I’ve been under-exercising these last few days, I need to lose energy. Come on, Matthias, we should actually see the ocean up there. We fight our way across the slope of the mountain. No sea to see. I walk through a small group of trees and there I see the top, the viewpoint. The sun just flies down to the horizon. We hurry up. There, we find the way again. Finally we are at the lookout. Crazy beautiful! With the clear view we feel like in Austria. Only cow bells are missing. Amazing!
On the way down we take the trail. It’s awfully long, since it meanders around the mountain, that we climbed head on earlier. We arrive back at the river and again we put rocks to have steps. Multiple times. I think five times we did these funny river crossings. The river bank on the other side is sometimes steep. Matthias, when I arrive over there, can you take my left hand and pull me up? Success. We’ve tried this kind of actions over and over again in the last years. At the end of the trail we pass the cattle gate for a last time. But they appear to be sleeping already. We are quite exhausted from all the great experiences in a single day. We go to the campground’s kitchen and cook pancake for dinner.
No other tourist. Only us. The only thing that we see are stars. The only thing we hear is the rumination of the cows at the fence. Now after dinner we are ultimately knocked out and crawl back into our freezing Opi into our sleeping bags. Good night.
