Sunday 25th July - Dunedin - Kaikoura - 550Ks
One more long day on the road - half the length of the South Island in fact . Once again when we wanted music to enhance our journey the radio gave up on us. All we heard as the 3 R's - rugby, racing and religion. However after we passed Christchurch we picked up 'Classic Rock' radio - nirvana! The scenery also got better in the afternoon as we passed wineries, ostrich farms and coastal beach roads. (We did stop briefly at 'Moeraki Rock's in the morning). Getting back to rugby, the national obsession with it was summed up with the 4 o'clock news bulletin which had 3 out of 4 stories rugby-related - even more incredibly one of the stories was only linked as 'it happened only hours after the rugby game' - but the story itself had absolutely nothing to do with rugby!

Monday 26th July - Kaikoura - Picton
Lots of lambs in the fields as we drive on. First stop was the 'Whale Watching' centre. Arrived at 8.45am and were able to get on the 10am trip - which didn't actually leave till nearer 11 -still... Once on the boat it wasn't long before the first Sperm Whale appeared - taking in his air on the surface before his next dive. A few 'sprays' later the back of him arches, his tail flips up in the air as disappears into the deep. They can stay down typically for 30-40 minutes at a time before they need to resurface. In all on the trip we saw 4 sperm whales, some dolpins, seals and albatross in flight. The whales are very graceful as they dive. The trip was informative with lots of computer graphics available. We grabbed a decidely average fry-up on the way back and headed back to our car. Didn't we leave it here? Oh dear, it looked like it was stolen! We were in a panic until we looked again and spotted it in the only place we hadn't looked! Still, it made us appreciate how important our stuff is to us.
When we got to Picton for booking our ferry to the North Island we found that the (much) cheaper of the 2 companies who do the trip was effectively closed for the weeek. So we had to fork out the extra cash for the company we were advised not to use - oh well. Still nevermind, as the motel we checked into was very plush indeed with a beautiful harbour-side view. It was about the size of a small house and cost us just over 25 pounds!