New Zealand - Kaikoura

This morning we said "goodbye" to Christchurch and drove north about two and a half hours to the small seaside town of Kaikoura, who's name means "eat crayfish" in Maori.  The area's local delicacy is the giant crayfish, otherwise known as rock lobster.  The coast is also famous for the local sea life encounters that can be had.  Our business today was the annual Seafest, a gathering of local chefs, brewers, and winemakers.  There are food demonstrations and live music.  In more recent years festivalgoers have started to use the occasion as an excuse to wear funky costumes.

On the way to Kaikoura we were treated to a sparkling sunrise over the pacific ocean along the eastern coast of the south island.  The blue skies didn't last long but there was intermittent sunshine for the rest of the day, which kept temperatures very comfortable.

Along the coast

Panorama of the black pebble beach at Kaikoura

My goal was to use this festival as an opportunity to try as many kinds of NZ seafood as I could.  I had paua croquets (paua is abalone), a crayfish cocktail salad (very nice), and a whitebait patty.  The whitebait was the "scariest" food but I ended up liking it.  Whitebait are the fry of five species of fish that spawn in the local rivers.  If you don't look too closely a whitebait fritter looks like it's just made up of little thin bits of white fish, and tastes like it too.  If you DO look closely, try not to stare into their little eyes or notice the bits of tail.  Honestly, it's not icky at all!  Of course there was all kinds of alcohol available too :)

In the demo tent with emcee Jax Hamilton (a former Master Chef contestant and now celebrity chef) helped a local cheesemaker demonstrate how to enjoy his local fare including a mild cheese drizzled in chili pepper infused honey (yummmm).  I learned that while blue cheese gets its moldy middle from the inside out, runny cheeses are broken down from the outside in by yeasts that break down the cheese's protein.  Fascinating!

Another and more recent Master Chef contestant, Richard Harris, the "gentleman butcher" gave a really great presentation on preparing lamb with a carrot salad.  He gave out copies of the recipe so I can't wait to try it at home.  He had a good sense of humor while demonstrating how to break down a whole leg of lamb.  When he got to a part that is best ground and cooked slowly, he set it aside with the statement that he'd give it to his aging mother who would "chew on that for a week".

Pimms Cup cocktail, whipped cream covered waffle

When we'd had enough Seafest, we took a short drive to the end of the peninsula that Kaikoura sits on and enjoyed a bit of low tide exploring.  The flat bit of rocks are a seafloor that is actually slowly rising above the ocean due to seismic movement.  The flats are below ancient cliffs that are currently used as farmland but you can see terracing from Maori forts that existed there in the past.  A small colony of seals lives in the area and while I was walking around and trying to watch my feet I nearly stepped on one!  They were very sleepy seals, luckily.  There is a walking path that goes to the top of the cliffs so we had fun taking pictures.

At the end of the afternoon it was time to keep driving further north to the Marlborough region, New Zealand's largest wine-producing region.  The highway scenery continued to be spectacular.

Road trip scenery