The South Island: A Retrospective - DAY FOUR

For those of you who may just be joining us, this is the tale of a trip taken last June. That's right. And I'm still posting the play-by-play. Clodagh and I went to the south island, and here's more about what we did:

We started out day four with a dip in the pools-of-a-variety-of-temperatures at Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa. While Clodogh was having her first of two spa treatments, I amused myself by hopping from pool to pool with my book, trying out each degree of hotness. Turns out, I like them hot. This place was lovely, with plenty of vegetation and little footpaths between a variety of pools of different size and shape. I wouldn't mind doing that again.

The spa treatments were pretty sub-par, but how can I complain? This is how: massages should be done in rooms, not in curtained off areas where you can hear people gabbing on at the reception desk. In all fairness, they were starting to remodel to make individual treatment rooms, but it's still pretty screwed up to not at least have a quiet space for a massage. Rant over.

We went to lunch at this fantastic place with great pasta and the first and only 10 out of 10 hot chocolate, as rated by Clodagh. Apparently, they put a lot of LOWV in this here hot chocolate. Maybe she can help me out with the name of this place. Oddly enough, I no longer remember where I had lunch somewhere around the 8th of June. We sat in the sun for a long time, pondering whether to go quad biking or hit the road, drinking warm beverages, and then headed over to a gift shop to buy wrapping paper for the birthday present I bought in Christchurch for one of my nieces. We decided to skip the quad biking in favor of getting a head start on Kaikoura.

So we drove to Kaikoura! I think this was my favorite drive of the trip. We raced a train, and stopped to make movies of sheep, and hit the east coast for a drive along the water (which feels a lot like driving down the 1 in California) before arriving at our palacial temporary home at The Dusky Lodge. We checked in and I started looking for a place to get some of this crayfish that the east coast is so famous before. We ended up a lovely place called Sonic on the Rocks, right across from the beach. The crayfish was tough and chewy, and for the first time in my life, I had to send a dish back. The kumara pizza which replaced it was absolutely amazing. I am enjoying the memory right now, back when cooked food was a thing people ate. Oh, and the only photo I took on day four was of a painting in the restaurant which contains a recipe for preparing duck. Someone please prepare this and tell me how it turns out:
On our walk back to the hostel, Clodagh and I stopped at a gas station to pick up some provisions. Against all logic, we attempted to make our own hot chocolate in one of the TWO hostel kitchens. Bad idea. It seems you can't really make hot chocolate with Cadbury bars and skim milk. WHO KNEW?!

Next time: Day Five, the day of the DOLPHINS. Aw, you thought THIS was going to be dolphin day, didn't you? SUCKER.