South Island Day 15 – Sea Kayaking

The day started off by waking up to a bird call that sounded like a door creaking. Was quite annoying, but got us up at about the right time.. Had some breakfast, then made our way to the Kayaking tour company..

We hopped into a bus, which brought us over to a launching area. The launching area was at low tide, so they took the water taxis out by tracker over the sand..

We took the “aqua taxi” from Marahau to Tobu then jumped into our kayaks and headed to Anchorage.

The taxi driver gave us a little info on the area, and stopped by the “apple rock”..

It was a beautiful sunny day, with slightly choppy seas… But great fun to Kayak in. We kayaked out to a little rock island to see some more seals…

Pretty much kayaked around that little island, then continued on..

It got wavy at times, to the point we were worried about tipping over.. With waves at times that rolled by with crests and valleys like 10 feet in height difference..

After a couple hours of kayaking along the shore and chatting with our guide, we stopped for a little picnic lunch at a little lagoon which was just starting to fill in as high tide was on it’s way.. This pic is looking into the lagoon, and me walking around:

This pic is looking the other way, out to sea.. The way we came, and went.

And a random shot of a bug on the beach (Mish was still practicing with the macro shots!):

We didn’t mind relaxing on the beach for awhile, since it was quite tiring kayaking for a couple hours.. But eventually we had to head back out..  We passed by some populated rocks..

There were lots of beautiful views.. But of course it’s not so easy to take some pictures with your camera while kayaking ;)..  Anyway, eventually we got to our destination (thankfully its a one-way trip!), and our guide was nice enough to take our pics (she would do so throughout the trip she said, but today the seas were a little too choppy)

When we hit the beach, it turned out there were a ton of tours that ended there.. Never seen so many Kayaks! Everyone was waiting for the water taxis, so we waited our turn for maybe half hour or so..

Then we got our aqua taxi back to Marahau, and drove out to Blenheim for the night. On the way, we passed by a little mountain that was being blanketed by a cloud.. It looked so nice Mish had to take a pic:

Another thing about the drive I remember, was that all around Motueka people have written their names and drawn pics with rocks on the low tide sands along the road.. I wish I took a couple pics of that! There were hundreds and hundreds of names and pictures.. Some small, and many large ones. Some of them would likely show up on Google Maps if they took the pic at that time..

We spent the night at Blenheim, which was close enough to Kaikoura so we could get to the Whale watch tour we had booked for tomorrow morning..