Easter in Kaikoura

Kaikoura

It is the second day of my vacation, Saturday before Easter.  Caleb and I arrived yesterday on this peninsula that juts into the Pacific.  Seals, dusky dolphins, albatross and whale call this area of the south island home.  In the summer, the rare blue penguin nest here.  I had planned to be here for New Years.  The delay means the water is colder; I have missed the penguin, and the companion I bring is my son.  This trip has had many permutations during the course of planning: traveling here alone, with Heidi, with Brandon, again alone, and finally, with Caleb.   As luck would have it, Caleb spent the eve before our departure in a tempest of fever-dreaming.  He has come down with what could be the flu: congestion and fever.  He is improving and hopes to be able to swim with the dolphins in the morning.  Can meaning be assigned to the bumps in the road?  

Seal on the side of the road...

I awoke this morning to find the snow capped mountains flirting with the clouds.  The tide was high as I ran along the coast toward the seal colony.  The first seal I came upon was sleeping on the asphalt on the side of the road.  It  lazily opened one eye and then the other, before reverting to its sleeping position.  Ahead, a woman from Australia insisted the seal had been hit.  She surmised this from a wet spot in the road.  The seal seemed completely unharmed to me. No blood.  In attempting to cover the seal with a blanket, the seal sat up and showed its sharp, yellowed teeth.  No, not dying… 

 View from Kaikoura Peninsula Track

Further up, the rocky coastline was dotted with seal, most sleeping and looking more dead than alive. Later, Caleb and I would return, walking this time.  The  lower tide allowed us to walk out to where some seal rested.  One or two would raise their heads to regard us.  This was the extent of our interaction with the seal.

Memorial Gardens in Kaikoura. Whale rib bones form the arches

This weekend, Easter, is a four day holiday. It marks the beginning of two weeks of school vacation, the first of their school year, which began in February (at the end of summer).  Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays, so most everyone has a four day weekend.  Thus, Kaikoura is quite busy this fall weekend and the backpacker has no vacancies.  Monday is also ANZAC day, the celebration of the landing of the NZ and Australian armed forces on Gallipoli beach in 1915.   The goal was to control the Dardonnelles, the gateway of the Bosphorus and Black Sea. However, at the end of the campaign, it was still held by the Turks. One in four of the people that served on Gallipoli Penninsula were kiwi.  ANZAC Day is always celebrated on April 25th.  Like Armistice Day in England and our own Memorial Day, it is the time when the war dead are remembered.  It is interesting that this year ANZAC and Easter weekend coincide.  Both days of remembrance of life given in hopes of achieving a greater purpose, but each with much different meaning.

Although I spent some of my youth in South America and have experienced several autumnal Easters, it is the experience of parenting children during northern hemispheric Easters that I relate to most.  In creating our own traditions, I recall relating to my children that Easter was also the celebration of the arrival of spring, the renewal of the earth from the bleak winter months.  Easter, here marks the beginning of the cooler and wetter weather.  As such, I am feeling particularly culturally disconnected this weekend.

At the South Bay entry to the Kaikoura Peninsula track this Maori statue guards the entry

I hope to write several short blog entries this trip.  I will post them, and fit them with a full complement of pictures when I return home as I did not pack the cord to download photos from the camera and will have to rely on the phone’s camera.

Kaikoura Penninsula Track: from whence I spied the spinning dolphins!

Tomorrow I swim with dolphins.  My underwater camera was purchased expressly for this trip!!! Today I witnessed dolphins cavorting in the water, spinning, doing 360 degree aerial acrobatics through binoculars from the shore.  Tomorrow I hope to see them from a different perspective!