Died and gone to Kaikoura

Sometime yesterday—Tuesday, the 6th of September, 2006—on my way by bus from Nelson to Kaikoura, I think, but I can’t be sure, that I must have died.

After 3 hours in the 12-seat minibus, I became so car sick that I half-puked in my mouth (I’m sorry, but it’s the truth!) The experience made me think of what I used to say when my brother and I would throw parties: “It’s not a real party until someone throws up.” According to those standards, I was halfway to a party on that long and severely snaking road.

The roads had whirled straight out of Nelson, we raged up one pass, down another, until we were finally spat out onto the east coast and to the horizon I haven’t seen in almost two weeks. Only two weeks, I have to remind myself, and how LITTLE of this country I have seen. Back on the coast, I prayed for a straight highway, and some reprieve from the awful waves of nausea.

Wrong.

I kept my eyes closed the last 120 km to Kaikoura, this helped, ah, but then I couldn’t resist. There are mountains, you see, close cousins of the massive southern alps and they were right there! I have been told by my sorely missed traveling mate, Alice, that I would love Kaikoura. But I didn’t think I would die on the way there….

The reason I keep saying this, cliché intended and all, is because I found something akin to magic, yes, I mean paradise, yes! Heaven! at Kaikoura—where upon arriving I was treated with a conglomeration of uplifting, once in a lifetime (if ever) occurrences. Especially for a land locked American girl.

I arrived at my hostel, the Dolphin Lodge, to find the note: “Watching whale and her babies off the beach. Make yourself at home!” Whales? Tired and sore and still queasy from the horribly sickening drive, I gingerly placed my backpack in a side room, grabbed my camera, valuables, and took off for the beach, about 5 minutes by foot.

Maybe twenty people dotted the lip of sand as it descended down into the pebbly wavelets. I followed their gaze out to the ocean until I finally saw what they saw, a smooth blackness, resting peacefully on the surface of the water, and fading to just below.

A whale. A very large whale, no more than fifty feet away. A very very large whale that looked more like a massive floating log than anything else. Flanked on either side by a baby.

Well, that was pretty much the end of everything else I wanted to do that day as I followed those damn whales 3km down the beach. And I wasn’t alone. Half of the town, including the town’s children who had been let out of school for the occasion, and pretty much every tourist to drive through, tromped along the rough beach, exchanging disbelieving glances, pulled toward this uncommon experience of witnessing nature this close to our own tame existence.

My first thought was that one of them must be terribly sick. They are going to die, I thought, they are going to beach themselves. And then I watched as they floated closer and closer to the shoreline. Massive whales, the mother was 50 feet long, I found out later. I didn’t want to see this horrible, inevitable thing happen. I sat abruptly in the charcoal gray rocks and sand and began to write a heartbreaking poem about it, so heartbreaking in fact that I began to cry before I finished. I looked up, at everyone else taking pictures of the spectacle as the whales drifted, closer, closer. I said out loud, “I can’t take pictures of this.” And then a man, a local in his 40’s, asked me why.

There weren’t dying, he told me.

They were playing—a mother Southern Right Whale, her calf, and another calf that she had adopted. They had been playing in the bay for the last week. Right whales love to ‘surf’ and also ride the tidal currents. And I watched them, with new reverance, with new awe, as they floated in the water, less than 30ft from shore at times; their massive black fins pushing through the surface. More people came, planes and helicopters circled overhead. Kaikoura is one of the world’s hotspots for whale watching and there were plenty of people excited that day! I stayed down there as long as I could until my hunger
set in.

After a few more visits to the beach, Suzanne, an Aussie and the caretaker, let me into her flat above the hostel, where I could see as far as the eye could see. We talked, drank tea and played with the binoculars, looking at the whales so far down below, quite content, until we saw the baby jump.

Breaching it is called. When the whale propels itself through the water horizontally, at high speeds, before finally using all of that momentum for an upward thrust! Their massive and valiant bodies erupt and push through the surface, they twirl with their flippers out and then they land on their backs in a shower of sea spray. We saw this happen once and with not a moment to spare, we were off. I grabbed my boots from the back porch, where the hostel cat, Socks, had tangled herself in the laces, grabbed my camera, journal, and a Kit Kat. We tore out of the graveled lot in Suzanne’s ride, a blue car aptly named Carlito, down to the beach, toward the spectacle of observers who, by now, numbered nearly fifty and were cheering. There! Lobtailing! When the whale pushes its tail above the water and then slaps it down hard, this sound can be heard for miles in the open sea. This happened a few times and then the baby decided to breach all the way up the beach! The mother moved graciously toward it (so protective of both calves, and rightfully so, the killer whale also moves in these waters) and just as she neared, the baby would take off again and breach all the way back! The mother patiently following the little one. Please remember, when I say “baby”, that he/she is still a good 20feet long and with mass the size of a small bus.

This was rare the locals told me. Southern Rights often came into shore, but never this close and rarely to play in the surf and drift contentedly. It was something you could bet on never seeing again. A side note: the Right Whale (there are both northern and southern) was, at one point, nearly hunted to extinction. They were called the ‘right whales’ because they were the right ones to kill. They were sitting targets really, seeing as they came into shore to mate and give birth.

And then I couldn’t stop wondering at everything else that happened after. The sun began to set in that brilliant hour surrounding twilight, the glorious pink and purple madness splashed across the white peaks behind us, then a small rainbow peaked out from behind a few clouds, and then, by golly, the almost-full moon erupted over the ocean with its luminous white face! Suzanne and I, along with most of the town, sat on the beach until night fell and we were freezing. The whales still moving, though quieter now, play time dwindling, and many of the other onlookers making their way back to cars and bikes and home.

There are too many massive emotions surrounding the experience, too many metaphors and on and on, so I’ll spare you all of that mushy dribble! I will say, however, that it happened again the next day, and sealed my profound love affair with Kaikoura. This place has affected me perhaps more than anywhere else I have been in the last few months.

Until soon, all
laura