“The chowder isn’t the type you have back in the States” I am warned.

The brunette woman working the oceanfront seafood cart has detected my accent and is concerned I won’t like her steaming bowl of mollusks.

“There isn’t much cream, just freshly made broth mixed with massive chunks of crayfish and mussels.”

Facing the kelp strewn waters of the Kaikoura Peninsula, a popular hamlet on the eastern coast of New Zealand’s South Island, this is exactly what I was hoping for: Massive chunks of crayfish and mussels. After all, it’s only appropriate for a place whose name literally translates to “meal of crayfish”.

Regardless, eating anything else in Kaikoura would just feel wrong, because Kaikoura is not a processed, pre-packaged type of town. It’s a place where the smell of sea salt wafts on the breeze and surfers recount that morning’s early dawn session. Storefronts advertise seal swimming, whale watching, and guided eco-walks, while local scuba shops display the current water temperature and visibility on outdoor chalkboards adorned in smiling blue dolphins.

This, I realize, is what separates Kaikoura from all of the other adventure destinations and photo opportunities which lay scattered around the South Island of New Zealand. Kaikoura is different from the gorges of Franz Josef glacier or walks such as the Routeburn Track in that it has been a long time since I have traveled through a place that refreshingly feels so alive.

Sure, there are pubs with drink specials and tacky New Zealand souvenir stores like any other tourist haunt in the world, but in Kaikoura there seems to be an intrinsic harmony the town has with nature that gives it an energy not felt in other parts of the country.

Nowhere is this more apparent than ambling over limpet covered rocks beneath the peninsula walkway on Kean Point. Aside from the sandy strands of kelp which give the walk a malodorous yet authentic aroma, the shoreline teems with nesting red billed seagulls and dozens of southern fur seals lounging contentedly on the warm rocks.

Read the rest over on Gadling…