We took a week’s holiday, touring the top of the South Island. We left early Sunday morning, after loading the van and a borrowed trailer with everything we thought we might need for a week’s camping.
It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the Waiau River was especially pretty.
After church, we set out to go north. The first stop was to pick up oil for the van. The oil has to be put in under the passenger seat!
Next, we stopped at Ohau Falls, because the baby seals are spending their days there again.
The sea is always beautiful across the highway from the falls, too.
This little guy found a hollow under a rock into which he could stick his feet to watch the sea in comfort!
After we left the falls, we were going through places we had never seen before. This long railroad bridge was impressive!
Hills a little ways south of Blenheim.
We turned off on the south side of Lake Grasmere to find the campground we had selected for the night.
Setting up camp for the first time! This was a DOC (Department of Conservation) campground. They provided flush toilets and water (boil before drinking), but that was all. We had a propane camp stove to cook on, so Mom and I worked on that while the rest set up tents and figured out how to blow up air mattresses. We were maybe 200 feet from the sea, which was quite loud here. Lovely sound to go to sleep to!
[…] Sunday we went to church as usual, and left there a little after 2:00. Our first stop (after picking up a few things we still needed in Kaikoura) was Ohau Falls, where we got to watch something like 50 baby seals playing in the pool at the base of the falls. They are so fun to watch! They are still so small (probably only a couple of months old) that they can leap completely out of the water. So cute! Some had gone up the cliff a little way (maybe 15 feet) and it was pretty interesting to see them trying to make their way (headfirst) back down. They did it very carefully. The mother seals spend most of their time out at sea, fishing, and come back every several days to feed their babies. While they wait several days for their mother to come back to feed them, the seal pups swim up the river to the base of the falls to play; apparently the river water is warmer than the sea. We were wondering how they know when to go back out to meet their mother for a feed! […]