As today was our last full day in NZ we thought we would try to make the most of it and do some nice things. After getting up and packing our campervan away we drove down to the centre of Akaroa for about 9.30am and purchased one of the day kayaking tours from the tourist centre.
The tour operator was going to pick us up at noon, so we spent the next couple of hours walking around Akaroa and having breakfast at L'Escargot Rouge. Akaroa is famed for having a somewhat French feel- all the roads are called ‘Rue’, the police are known as the ‘Gendarmerie’ and the community gather together annually for the Race D’Escargot which is, as the name suggests, a snail race.
After our fill of pain au chocolat and croissants we went back to the visitor site where Shireen, our tour kayak guide operator, a middle-aged lady, was waiting for us. Today, Lucia and I were the tour, so we had some quality two-on-one time with Shireen, who is, quite probably, my favourite New Zealander to date.
She drove us across the isthmus of Banks peninsula to Flea Bay, or Pohatu as Shireen likes to call it. It’s called Flea Bay because of the huge number of penguins (which are rife with fleas) that live there. Pohatu is the original Maori name for Flea Bay, and is for obvious reasons a slightly more endearing name.
The drive over was about 20 minutes, which was for the most part Shireen’s personal driveway. They owned over 1,500 acres spread across two valleys encompassing a protected marine park and home to Shireen, her husband and son, a few feral peacocks, four chickens, six dogs, a couple of seal colonies, approximately 100 head of cattle, 200 sheep, 300 penguins, many possums and many times more fleas.
Shireen and her family live off the land and eco-tourism- a very wholesome life. One of my favourite quotes of the day was from Shireen- ‘Sometimes, when his sheep die, our neighbour will chuck his sheep from the top of that cliff into the sea...he’s naughty that way’, certainly something you don’t usually expect to hear on a tour.
The kayaking itself was nice and peaceful, there were plenty of seals and birdlife to be seen, though fairly uneventful. The sea was a bit too rough to go too far out of the bay and when Lucia started to feel queasy from the 2m swells we decided it was time to head back in for a tea and homemade muffins.
The table was piled high with ammunition; the dad had spent the day hunting wallabies for the family dinner and the son was about to go out hunting possums (both are considered pests in NZ) for the dog’s dinner. After stopping for a few photos on the way back we said our goodbyes to Shireen and jumped in the campervan en route to Christchurch.
At about 6pm we arrived at a campsite in the centre of the city, which was actually just an expensive parking lot for the hotel guests which they rent out to campervaners.
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