Kaikoura & the Baby Fur Seals

I'm proud of this picture, so it gets to be first!

We're back in New Zealand and it's a beautiful weekend, so it's time to get back on the road for another day trip.  Up next on the list: Kaikoura, a small town about 183km north of Christchurch.

As you can see from the pictures, it was a warm, sunny day and we had a great time.  The pictures are taken from the beach at Kaikoura, looking both at the peninsulas to the north and south of the town.  We thought it was interesting to see the snow-capped mountains ending in green hills that run into the ocean. Quite a diverse landscape!

We had a good time at the beach with Ike. He had a hard time walking across all of the rocks and had his claws completely spread out trying to find solid ground. However, the threat of getting left behind outweighed his consternation!

I decided to get in a picture with Ike and right as we were about to take it, a huge wave came and hit me and Ike. You are seeing my reaction after I got hit in the backside and Ike ran away.

It took some coaxing to get him to come back to me...but he eventually came back.

He made it - happiness!

Brian was much nicer than me and picked him right up.

I took this picture because I honestly never thought I would see a llama anywhere other than South America. This was a surprise!

Fur Seals

One of the main reasons I have wanted to drive to Kaikoura, especially now more than later in the summer is to see the fur seals that live here.  They are more prevalent here in the winter months so I wanted to see them before they moved on for the summer.  

A big thanks to Carl from my tax team for giving me a heads up on where to find the baby seals.  We saw so many of them playing at Ohau Waterfall. It was awesome!

Luckily there was a nice volunteer at the waterfall who took a picture of us together.  Can you see the seals in the background playing in the water?

A little further down the stream we found a few babies playing and got some fun pictures.

I got some pretty good close up pictures of the babies. We had a great time!

We watched these two have a climbing competition.

Who's going to win?

This guy is a little sleepy...

I think he sees me! The other two could care less that I kept creeping closer haha.