Kaikoura, a couple of hours N of Xchurch, is billed as the spot to be.  Got the brochure.  Wowee.  Unfortunately totally touristed.

This probably used to be a wonderful area with cliffs, mountains, rocks, beaches and seals, whales and dolphins.

They’re all still there, but now the overwhelming impression is that a wonderful place has been turned into a commodity – everything you can think of. And some things you can’t – sheep shearing demonstration for instance.  Well, I know New Zullund has an awful lot of sheep, but surely it’s a bit out of character with all these marine things going on.  And anyway if they shear one sheep a day – at 3.30pm if you want to know – then what about all those sheep waiting around till the end of the season.  Get pretty hot I reckon.

The sad thing about these touristified places is that what you came to see is subsumed by commercialisation.  It’s just not possible to get a sense of nature as it is, it has to be nature as interpreted by some commercial operator.  Or the park dudes – who provide the better kind of information, but, these days, always heavily laced with eco-dogma and conservation-speak.

Whether you like it or not (and we don’t) you simply can’t shut it out and see the natural landscape – what with roadsigns and brochures and advertising everywere.  So the original attraction has gone forever.

There were about 10 things to do in Kaikoura – seal watching, whale viewing, kayaking, sailing and on and on.  Thing is, we’ve done all that (and don’t want to pay for it thanks).  Even sheep shearing.

So what we did is bugger off out of it.