The weather was mixed during our Honeymoon in New Zealand. It seemed to rain a lot when we were there, and all of the locals (who seemed to love to talk about the weather, much like Canadians) agreed that the weather was very unusual during the three weeks that we were there. Usually, New Zealand experiences Westerlies from the mid latitudes, much like Canada does, so the wind blows from the West to the East. Due to the roughly North-South mountain range (again, similar to the Rockies), this means that the west coast is usually very wet, and the east coast is somewhat drier and experiences more good weather.

During our trip, however, they were experiencing an Antarctic blast coming up from the south pole and being deflected by the coriolis effect into a cold Polar Easterly. This meant that the East coast was wet, cold, and stormy, while the West coast was unusually dry and sunny. It worked out great for us once we got to the West coast, but for the first two weeks of our trip we had to live with cold and rainy weather.

Unfortunately, this meant that our whale watching trip in Kaikoura had to be cancelled due to stormy seas. Luckily, that was our only cancellation during the whole trip, but we were still sad because we were really looking forward to it. Instead of whale watching, our B&B host recommended that we hike around the Kaikoura peninsula. It turned out to be a great suggestion. Even though the weather was very cold and windy, we did the hike and saw some amazing scenery.

The path we took around the peninsula ended up at a fur seal colony, so we walked out to the rocky shore to see if there were any fur seals hanging out. We had seen some fur seals from the train on our way into Kaikoura, so we already knew that they were well camouflaged against the rocks, but I was still surprised at how difficult it was to find them when we were so close. There was one large seal that people were taking photos of, so I snapped a few pictures, and then Angela wanted me to take a picture of her by the shore. After I took her picture, I realized that she was standing less than ten feet away from another fur seal!

It had been sleeping soundly, but we accidentally woke it up with our touristy shenanigans, and it popped its head up to check us out. It posed for a few pictures, including the one below, before going back to sleep again as we retreated a little bit.

Technical details: This image was taken with my Rebel XT + 70-300 IS at 150mm, ISO 200, f/8, for 1/80th of a second.

Comments

Gorgeous picture, Mike!  That fur seal is thinking "what was that? oh, it's
just people."

Just curious, was all that meteorology explained to you by the locals or did
you research that afterwards (or by yourself) :)

Kiwis seem to love to talk to the weather, so we got the meteorology lecture
from several different people along the way.  They all gave the same
explanation for the weather, too... so they really seemed to know what they
were talking about.  Also, they are very detailed about their weather
information... for example, we were told typical yearly rainfall amounts for
many of the places we went to by the guides or boat captains or train
conductors.

I also quickly verified that the information they told me was
correct when I got back by looking up typical New Zealand weather patterns on
the internet.  Meteorology is one of my many side hobbies...  :)

Another thing
I noticed was that Kiwis like to boast that their little corner of the country
is the best at something.  So everywhere you go there will be a sign or someone
will tell you that "Christchurch gets the most hours of sunlight in New
Zealand", or "Milford Sound has the most rainfall in New Zealand", or "Auckland
has the most variable weather in New Zealand".	So you can take all that
information in and sort of piece together what the typical weather patterns are
like.