Our great walk

For Drew consists of blowing leaves off all the verandas and patios, hedge trimming, spraying for weeds along the electric fence line, doing the trash run (composting, recycling, burning all paper waste, and tossing meat leftovers into the water), weeding, gardening and carrying guests’ bags.

For Kirk, it means dinner service. From 6:00 p.m. until 10:30 – 11:00 p.m., I set the table (usually for the maximum of 10 guests as this place is full almost every night), serve dinner, take wine orders, follow-up with dessert and coffee, do the dishes, and prepare for breakfast. It is a hurried, and sometimes hectic four and a half-hours, but I remind myself it is as though I’m throwing my own private dinner party for older British and Australian travellers.

Drew’s newest hobby is fishing. He hasn’t caught anything in comparison to the fish Nick and Jaye catch in the Bahamas but he has reeled in a couple of blue cod. He has learned to clean and fillet them, and we’ve enjoyed the meat as an appetizer. Chris, and the chef Jeff, go out almost every afternoon for a few hours (taking Drew with them), and they free dive for scallops (when they are in season), and spear fish. I’ve asked them to not shoot Drew.  A couple of times out on the boat, we’ve spotted large pods of the bottlenose dolphin. A nice $100 freebie.

We spent many afternoons rowing the handmade boat into the cove, sometimes just watching the shoreline, sometimes fishing.

At the end of the jetty, there is a working phone box, like the red boxes on the streets of London. Chris built it himself years ago when The Lazy Fish was a Backpackers and it has got to be one of the most photographed features – it’s the image on their complimentary postcards, there are artistic photos of it in the office, it is the screensaver on the staff computer, and it even graces the cover of a coffee table book on upscale NZ resorts. Chris is trying to sell the place so it could be seeing its last great days.

On our way back up the Kaikoura coast, on the way to The Lazy Fish, we pulled over at a roadside seafood stall in hopes of savouring New Ziwi crayfish (or rock lobster). But with a whole cray costing $40, it was out of our budget. We opted for the $7 garlic scallops. The other photo is of a caravan I liked the look of.

Here are photos from two days spent exploring scenic Banks Peninsula back in early February. Highlights included the harrowing Summit Road drive, getting lost among the isolated coves of Diamond Harbour and Port Levy, the calm expanse of Le Bons Bay, camping in the tiny cove of Okains, and the French-inspired town of Akaroa where we swam with the world’s smallest and rarest dolphin – the Hector’s dolphin (we don’t have any good photos of the playful mammal but Drew has got some good footage).

Our working holiday at the beautiful Lazy Fish finishes on Saturday morning when we board a 10:20 a.m. water taxi to Ship Cove, Captain Cook’s first landing spot and the trail head to the 71-km Queen Charlotte Track. Thanks to Hayden in Auckland for sending his ginger nut cream pudding recipe through in a hurry…we’ll be eating it tomorrow night at our farewell dinner.

We’ll hike for four days (although it is easy enough to do the QCT in three). The kicker about this Great Walk is that our bags are transported every day by a local water taxi service. So posh. So easy.

 We’ve got great photos from The Fish to share when we get back.