First Fur Seal Sighting North of Kaikoura, New Zealand
Seeing our first wild fur seals ever (in our lifetimes) has Carrie and me thinking that we need to spend more time in New Zealand.
These seals are pretty much year-round occupants of a rocky beach just two and a half hours north of Christchurch, just north of Kaikoura. We’ve been in Christchurch two months, and been in Kaikoura once already (for a brief afternoon), but despite this, hadn’t seen the fur seals until stopping by for a quick peak at dusk.
It’s got us wondering what else we’ve been missing.
The fur seals at Kaikoura are most active in the spring time (which is October/November here), but many of them are pretty much year round residents.
We had fun watching these seals, even though they were quite difficult to see at dusk (and even more difficult to see on video).
We’ll likely be figuring out a way to extend our visas here in New Zealand…
With the campervan returns, it’s possible to spend about $30/night (accommodation included in the van) and now we know people on both the North and South Island we can visit and stay with.
We still have
- hector dolphins to swim with
(only 7,000 ish left in the world, and the only place you can swim with them is NZ) - fur seals to watch
- giant kauri trees to marvel over
- beaches to drive on
- places to SCUBA
- …
Who knows what other marvels we’re missing or don’t know about yet here in New Zealand.
Plus, the food is great, the people are nice, and although the weather is a bit wet (and cold in the south), it is really pretty nice overall.
What’s not to like and to want to stay here in New Zealand for?
We felt this way about Boquete, Panama too… (I wonder just how many places we’ll feel this way about.)
The world is a big place, and this portion of traveling this way is a bit limited for us as we’d like to be back in the states by fall 2011. However, we’re not ready to be back on the move again in a country that feels foreign to us.
So maybe we’ll stay here in NZ a bit longer before moving on to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, or Thailand.
In any case, we definitely want to go back and get pictures of these amazing creatures, New Zealand fur seals, in the daytime.
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YAY!! We would love it if you stayed here longer! Have you recieved your visa yet, Jon? Carrie would definitely need to get hers from outside the country, because you can’t overstay your permit. Just a heads up. If she applies electronically from outside NZ, it should only take a few days to process. So maybe hop over to Aus for a while and then come back? We’re so looking forward to seeing more of you guys! (Although I do realize you’ll be spending most of your time in other parts of the country.)
Just use a proxy service to request it from “outside the country”…or you can remote control my computer sometime so it looks like it comes from Colorado. Not sure the process…but if they are just checking the IP origin, that should do it.
Hey Adam,
Did you mean to write this comment on this post?
Jonathan