Kaikoura

Tuesday, February 29, 2000:  Kaikoura

We made a simple scrambled egg and toast breakfast and prepared some sandwiches for the road.

Next stop:  Kaikoura

We checked with Dolphin Encounter for availability today.  We booked a 9:00 am encounter for tomorrow (March 1).

I checked the Lonely Planet guide for places in the area to stay.  I spotted and mentioned to Doug an interesting listing for The Old Convent.  Doug immediately thought his brother would get a kick out of knowing we stayed at an old convent.  Why not see if there’s availability?  Doug called.  As it turned out, they just received a cancellation.  They had one queen bedroom left.  We’ll take it.

We found The Old Convent not far from where we were calling.  It is indeed an old convent.  As we were shown to our room upstairs, the owner, a French chef, was on his way down the stairs.  He said that he offers a three course French dinner, if we’d like to reserve two seats.  We did.  Our room was small, clean and French provincial.  After resting, we walked around the convent grounds, admiring the garden, and then went into town to explore before dinner.

At dinner, we shared our table with three couples:  Peter and Ann, an older English couple; John and Claire (John is a doctor in Christchurch) and another couple – the wife is a nurse and they were both scheduled for Dolphin Encounter the next day.  Dinner was excellent.  The owner/chef joined us for a glass of wine.

More encounters tomorrow….