Kwick Swim at Kaikoura

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So we picked up our campervan after our adventures in Christchurch and set off on our little trip round the South Island. The van is HEEEEUUUUUGE - far bigger than I expected! This has the advantage of it being really rather spacious - standing up room, a teeny closet loo/shower (delete as appropriate), a sink, microwave, good-sized fridge, grill and four ring hob. There's plenty of storage space and the back of the van transforms from two sofas and a table into a massive double bed. The disadvantage of course is it is slower to drive and a bit more difficult to weave about the roads in than we had perhaps imagined. Anyway, now I'm writing on day 4 and generally our teething problems (Rich's) and initial fears about the loo (mine) are over and I can say we are very happy with it. It's pretty cool to be able to set off whenever we like, go wherever we like and stop whenever we like for a sandwhich or whatever - time constraints of course as usual as we are on a mega-tight itinerary once again 😊

So anyway, we set off up the road to Kaikoura in search of dolphins and whales, and enjoyed the scenic drive immensely. There are snow-capped mountains everywhere and they are so impressive, dwarfing the little towns nestled into the bottom of them. There are sheep everywhere, lambs and cows, calves, goats, goatlets, lamas, deer... Spring is such a cute time to be here! Kaikoura is a town of reasonable size, although we only say that now we have a few more days' experience of the NZ towns - we thought it was really small at the time! We found a good campsite, did a big shop for grub and booze - drinking Malborough Sauv Blanc at every available opportunity of course as it is easily half the price here, if not less hurrah! Then we got fish and chips (fish awesome, chips rubbish as usual) and headed back to the van for our first night's kip. It was FREEZING!!!!

The next morning we were up bright and early to get kitted up in the most ludicrous wetsuit garb (two-pieces, booties and hats etc as the sea is about 20 degrees colder here than it was in Oz!) to go swimming with dolphins off the coast. We were sooooo excited about this, although Rich had done it before, I hadn't and it's one of my life ambitions. However our trip had a bittersweet outcome - although we did find a pod of about 20 playful Hector Dolphins, they were swimming with (teasing) a humpback whale! That is very rare to see here, and it was an absolutely incredible thing to see. Unfortunately it meant we couldn't jump in the water as it's not legal to swim with the whales - for their protection and ours... but we got up so close it practically went under our boat at one point, and we got some amazing views and fantastic pictures of it. Very cool thing to see! We had planned a helicopter ride that afternoon to go searching for whales but after such an amazing close-up we decided not to do that and saved ourselves an absolute fortune by combining the two unexpectedly like that!

We went out to a really delicious restuarant that night, after walking miles and miles in search of seals (we did find two) and a boo-hoo dead penguin on the beach 😞 But the meal was amazing, and we had crayfish which is actually more of a small lobster here and the local thing to eat - mmmmmm gorgeous.

The next morning we set off bright and early to drive round the top of the S. Island to include the Malborough wine region. More on the next blog!

Love C&R xxxx

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