What a great day.
Since we’re down on the coast we’d decided a while ago to book a boat trip today. Rita narrowed it down to three, which we had to choose between. One was a 4 to 8 hour trip on a sail boat, complete with a BBQ lunch, another was two hours on a big high speed motorboat, and the last was a three hour trip with kayaking. We plumped for the latter, which was the one that appealed most to me with my history of motion sickness.
The trip didn’t start till ten and we were only six minutes drive from the meeting point, so it was a relaxed start to the day even including my last minute return to our airbnb for my seasickness tablets.
The weather was calm with a light breeze but there was a swell once we reached the open ocean so I was pleased I had self medicated. The boat is a vintage Portuguese wooden boat constructed in 1957, and was not built for speed. It took us an hour to get to the area of coastline we walked along yesterday.
Simon was initially dubious about kayaking but eventually decided to do it as otherwise he’d just be sitting on the boat for an hour with the captain, watching the rest of us having fun. They had beer on board so it wasn’t a simple decision. We have kayaks at Waikanae but he never came out with us when I took the kids kayaking over the years so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d refused. They used double kayaks, quite solid stable ones in plastic, so in the end no one capsized apart from one plastic surgeon and that was only when his copilot jumped out in shallow water and tipped over the boat in doing so. No harm done. The kayaker in the back seat has the control so I directed Simon to the front seat to be the motor so that I could be the brains of the outfit. I was very impressed with his skills actually. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d tipped us over to be brutally frank.
We spent an hour kayaking around, looking at the rock formations and the various precarious fishing spots that the local anglers access by a system of ropes hammered into the rocks. There was too much swell unfortunately to explore many of the caves, apparently this is typical this late in the season. We did manage to scramble into one cave to have a look around, which I thought was quite brave of the tour guide. There was only one partial capsize, the one I mentioned earlier.
The guide was very informative about local history, geology, flora and fauna. I asked him at one stage about why the local fishing industry was dying, as he’d casually mentioned in passing previously, and I got quite an impassioned speech that lasted several minutes. All the fault of the government apparently, starting with making schooling mandatory which destroyed traditional family boat building. This can’t survive paying people a living wage, and ends up giving children ideas above their station, even though they end up just working at McDonalds instead. I think forcing people to pay taxes was another factor. It is sad that traditional ways of life are lost to giant international corporations but it’s something happening around the world, isn’t it?
Anyway, after our kayaking was over we had 15 minutes free time to swim while they packed everything up for our return trip. I loved it. I had a giant grin on my face the whole return trip.
We ate lunch at one of the many eateries around the harbour. It’s obviously very touristy here, it must be jam packed with Brits in the high season. I don’t blame them; it’s a gorgeous spot, with great weather and so easy to get to, and everyone speaks good English. I gave up on my Duolingo Portuguese a couple of days ago – the pronunciation is horrible to learn – and am working on my Spanish. We cross the border tomorrow.