New Zealand - Christchurch to Kaikoura

Apologies - I've become a bit of an expert at procrastinating.....must be this fast pace of life that's doing it to me!

So on to Kaikoura - a mere 3 hour drive from Christchurch up the East Coast. Once again a very scenic drive along the coast with all kinds of wildlife spotted along the way, in particular seals but more about them later.

Kaikoura is renowned the world over for whale watching and swimming with dolphins, particularly the latter - apparently you could be out there swimming with up to 1000 of them at a time!

Anyway - the plan was to stay in Kaikoura for a week with a couple of good friends made along the way, Nik from Wales who I met on my first day in kiwi land and Anita, a londoner from Brum. And stay for a week we did! Was good to stop in one place for a little bit longer and actually unpack the bags - also gave us an opportunity to work on the tans (Can safely say I was the whitest one there....Anita being of Indian origin and Nik being a slave to the rays - and neither of them with god damn Irish skin!!!)

The week went by in a haze of lazy days by the pool, free vegetable soup in the kitchen, several evenings in the pub, the occasional dinner out and the most memorable - swimming with the seals. We tried on a couple of occasions to go out on this trip....the first time it pissed it down and the winds were up pretty high which made it a little hairy getting out to the colony but out we went anyway, donned in our 7mm wetsuits (pretty much the thickest you can wear - the sea temperature was a balmy 15 degrees.....) on one of those blow up boats - took about half an hour in the boat and we were skipping along through 1-2 metre surges which left a few people a little green - anyhoo we got out to the colony, hopped in the water, swum over and waited......and waited......and waited......and waited - wisely the seals had decided to stay on their rocks! They were probably looking at us thinking, 'nutters - mad crazy nutters'. Pretty much meant that it was a bit chilly for them to be in the water and here we were freezing our asses of expecting them to jump in and frolick around for our amusement - I don't think so! So swim back to the boat, shiver uncontrollably and clatter teeth for the half hour trip back - leg it back to the centre and thaw out under the hot showers for the next 4 hours....well maybe 4 minutes.

The story was the same the next day - hammered it down all day so that day's attempt at seal clubbing was put on hold until lo and behold.....da daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa - the skies cleared, the sun came out and the water temperature increased by.....ooooh let me see now - maybe 2 degrees or so - just like swimming in a bath (if you add ice). We donned the wetsuits again and made like eel over to where the seals were - this time they humoured us and swam under, over and around us. And they're sooooooo cute and extremely graceful - makes us humans look like clumsy eejits. They're also pretty big and very territorial, so spent a lot of time trying not to look upright otherwise there may have been some fisticuffs at 10 paces.

Without doubt a great experience and one I'd love to repeat! And compared to everything else an absolute bargain at only $65.

I also got to pilot an aeroplane while I was there, basically the pilot takes off and lands for you; you're in control the rest of the time - pretty cool experience and fabulous views around the coast and then over the snow capped peaks behind the town. Who knows maybe I'll take up flying as a hobby some time in the future.....

So that was Kaikoura - truly the aquatic playground of New Zealand.