The Albatross hostel (named as there are trips to go off and see the nearby big birds) is situated in the old post office building so has a couple of sweet features, like the massive safe door.
It is decorated in a funky way and has some interesting things to do, like musical instruments and art corner where you can do some painting.

Cooking here has been fairly good – there’s not a huge amount of room but have cooked at odd hours so could take more time. The best thing is that there is tons of stuff on the free shelf so have been able to use herbs n spices at long last. They even have fresh herbs growing outside that you can use.
This has come at a particularly good time for us as we had a sad, lamenting conversation in Wellington about how much we miss the maldon sea salt in our nigella salt pig at home. What this says about us, I do not know. Suggestions not welcome!!

The weather has been pretty hit and miss and seeing as pretty much all the things to do around here are mind bendingly expensive, we’ve ended up a bit fed up and bored at times. The hostel is nice on a sunny day when everyone is off doing stuff but when it’s wet, everyone is in and it’s too small for that really.

We did entertain ourselves at a little farm park just outside the town. They specialised in Llama treks (didn’t need to leave sussex for that I know) but it was the rest of the menagerie that turned out to be fun. Doesn’t matter what mood you are in, you can’t not be happy to see pigs and rabbits surely? I am totally besotted with New Zealands own Kune pigs, as they had in our farm stay. They are just so darned ugly, you have to adore them.

Much of the area the animals mixed freely with each other and with you. They had a tame dear, lots of crazy turkeys who liked to chase the collie dogs. Tons of ducks and chickens with chicks and ducklings – awwww.

In one of the areas we were met affectionately by the pig which was a normal pig mixed with a wild boar who was rather cute/ugly and took a bit to much of a shine to me – the girl came and penned her in which alarmed me after she said that she was on heat and acting strangely. What that says about me, I don’t know. I won’t go into the story of the goat that scared Mark so much that he ran out and hid behind a gate – that would just embarrass him.

They had some emus, fenced in, at the top field. They are funny, almost dinosaur like creatures. They were making very peculiar noises and got very ancy when one of the donkeys came up close to the fence next to them. Who says donkeys are stupid.. basically the emus get all territorial and try to attach the donkeys. This means pointlessly kicking the fence, but also launching themselves over the fence to peck the donkey. This clearly has little effect on the donkeys thick backside other than presumably to give it a good scratch, as it happily sat there until the emus eventually retreated to sulk in the corner.

We are leaving here tomorrow to go to Christchurch. We are definitely ready to go at this point. Kaikoura is a cute little town and when the sun is out it is lovely. I’m sure in fact it’s a nice place to live, but when you’re hosteling, as we have found in New Zealand generally, if the weather isn’t good and you haven’t got much money to spend (or warm clothes to wear) it can be a tad frustrating. As ever, I am looking forward to heading to a city with a bit more going on.