Interview with Kyle from Barekiwi.com

Kyle “te Kiwi” Mulinder is behind Bare Kiwi, one of the top New Zealand travel blog, chronicling his adventures around New Zealand and Australia. He regularly visits Kaikoura and wrote a piece about his adventures here. He is the author of the viral video: A seal slapped me in the face with an octopus!

We’ve asked him a few of his favorite things about Kaikoura:

Kyle over the Kaikoura coastline

Kaikoura peninsula

… What’s your favorite things to do in Kaikoura in the fall?
Dolphin swimming is my favorite thing to do in Kaikoura. I also love seating back and let Kaikoura do its magic.

… What’s your favorite food to eat when visiting Kaikoura?
There is a lovely Thai restaurant in Kaikoura which I like a lot when visiting Kaikoura.

… What’s your favorite photography spot in Kaikoura?
That’s a hard one! There is a lot going on in Kaikoura! I think the lookout is my favorite. I love chilling out up there.

… What’s your favorite NZ photographer or blogger?
It has to be Shaun Jeffers. Check out his work!

… Finally tell us about your best souvenir visiting Kaikoura…
I have several but the first one is when the Kaikoura local tribe gave my a piece of pounamu a greenstone that I wear.
Another one is when a seal slapped me in the face by an octopus! I was testing a new camera with Kaikoura Kayaks. The video went viral globally!

Kaikoura seals

Dolphin swim Kaikoura

Thank you so much Kyle for sharing. You can follow his adventures on Instagram and YouTube.

In the press: Lonely Planet India

View fullsize

View fullsize

State Highway 1 reopening after one year

Great News !! The New Zealand Transport Authority has confirmed that State Highway 1 (SH1), both north and south of Kaikoura, will reopen to traffic on December 15, 2017. It should be noted that initially the road will be open only from 7am until 8.30pm. Travelers will need to plan accordingly.

194 kms of our SH1 was badly-damaged by more than 85 landslides caused by the magnitude-7.8 earthquake in November of last year. We would like to send a BIG Thank You to all the people who have literally moved mountains to get the highway re-opened by this Christmas !

State Highway 1 - Mangamaunu

The stunning journey along Kaikoura's coastline is yours to enjoy once again. We look forward to welcoming you to Hapuku Lodge + Tree Houses!

More information about the current conditions on the highway is available at www.nzta.govt.nz/p2c

Press Review - Air France Madame Magazine

Hapuku Lodge is the only New Zealand property to be in the prestigious Air France Gold List for 2017!

Hapuku Lodge + Tree Houses welcomed the Australian Governor-General to a lunch

Hapuku Lodge + Tree Houses welcomed the Australian Governor-General to a lunch

We hosted the lunch for the Governor-General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, and his wife, Lady Cosgrove, and fifteen Australian officials who accompanied Sir Peter, as well as fifteen local residents and officials from Kaikoura.  We took this opportunity to introduce these important guests to our local seafood and the locally sourced venison.  They loved it.  And we had a great time.

Sir Peter was visiting Kaikoura with the attendant Australian officials to thank the town for having looked after all the Australians who were stranded and otherwise affected by the earthquake last November 14, 2016.  At the time, the town was landlocked, without power, water and adequate sewage facilities, leaving the many visitors stranded.  The Township did its best to look after everyone and it is the effort and graciousness of Kaikourians that the Governor-General came to honour.

Kaikoura Earthquake - State Highway One : Progress is well on track

We were lucky that our Lodge and Tree House structures came through the huge “Kaikoura Earthquake” of November 14, 2016, relatively unscathed – plaster cracks, broken bottles, and the loss of a lot of sleep.  With respect to other aspects of our environment we were not as lucky and for the balance of our summer season, which in our southern hemisphere runs from September through March, we were challenged by the significant damage all along the coast.  The worst issue from our point of view was the massive landslides along Highway One that smothered the road in hundreds of tons of boulders, trees and dirt.

State Highway One - North of Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand

Highway One runs from Picton (the receiving port for the Wellington ferry) and Blenheim (the nearest airport of size) in the north through Kaikoura to Christchurch in the south. The Highway is the Lodge’s primary artery for supplies and guest arrivals. It is essentially the only way into and out of Kaikoura.  There is an alternative, longer route from Christchurch to Kaikoura, the Inland Road, that was less damaged by the quake than Highway One, and which was restored relatively quickly.   From mid-January Highway One to the south, from Kaikoura to Christchurch, has been open on a restricted basis - but the route to the north is still closed.

The restoration of the Highway is requiring a huge and expensive outlay of money and effort, involving hundreds of workers and innumerable pieces of heavy equipment (even helicopters and ships) working 10 hous a day, 7 days a week.  This is particularly true for the northern route. There the landslides and rebuilding of the road are being attacked from both the north and the south simultaneously. The NZ government has announced that “ no matter what” the road will be fully open by December 2017, an announcement that we take to be a promise.  

Hapuku Lodge + Tree Houses, Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand

The staging area for the northern restoration effort is being carried on right around the corner from the Lodge, so we are able to monitor daily the progress being made by the hundreds of men & women from the recovery crews.  Considering the scale of the job the progress is quite remarkable.  Over half a million cubic tons of debris has to be removed from the roadway and disposed of in an environmentally safe way.  The largest load a dump or tip truck can only carry is 3 cubic tons, so we can only imagine the number of trips involved -  at times it seems to us to be a Sisyphean effort - but we are confident that the workers will prevail. We watch in amazement.

The larger Kaikoura environs were also affected in significant ways by the quake: major uplifting and subsidence of land, the ocean floor, including that of the local harbour, altered in significant and not yet fully understood ways, and the disruption of a large number of bird and ocean colonies.  Repair of Kaikoura harbour’s infrastructure is well under way, allowing the local oceanic tours, Whale Watch, Dolphin Encounter and Kaikoura Kayaks, to regroup and get back to business.

Full operation of the harbour is expected well before the opening of the 2017-18 summer season.

The Ohau seal colony, seals pup nursery

We are also getting good news about the recovery and regrouping of the local seal colonies.  The Ohau seal colony to the north of Hapuku is adjusting extremely well, with a number of new seal pup nursery pools evident only a few miles north of their previous long term nurseries. This good news coupled with the recent multiple sightings of Orca, Humpback, and Sperm whales and the daily sighting of hundreds of Dolphins leads us to believe that Kaikoura is on the road to a full recovery.

If you are thinking about coming to Kaikoura this next summer, please rest assured that the town will be ready to welcome you with open arms, as will we.

We want to give a special shout out and thank you to all those guests that joined us this past summer in spite of all the obstacles, and we hope that they found the shifting landscape and the earthworks as interesting as we do.