After Hanmer Springs we drove north to camp at a rather small and busy DoC site near Kaikoura, ready for the next day's activities. Now for a boring bit... Kaikoura is a small peninsula that sticks out into the Pacific, close inland are 2000+ m peaks and not very far offshore is a deep ocean trench. The mixing of the sea currents in this area produces lots of food and means there is potentially lots of marine life to see.

In the morning we drove to the sea front to have breakfast and were treated to huge scenery of misty sea rising up to snow-capped mountains. We then went to the end of the peninsula to look for seals. While I didn't have any problems seeing them lounging on the rocks right next to the car park, Anna was less visually able and I had to point out the large brown seal-shaped seals to her. She was not the only person not to see them though; a bit later a French lad asked us where they were! There were about 15 fur seals on various rocks and they were not bothered by humans at all, you could get up very close to them. They were mostly lying on their backs, occasionally waving a flipper around and checking out who was nearby before closing their eyes again.

We walked up to the top of the headland where you could see remains of a Maori Pa (hill fort, think ditches and palisades) and out to sea was a pod of around 40 - 50 dolphins. There were two tourist boats watching them and they were treated to lots of jumping and general showing off, it was good to see from the shore, and they must have had a great show in the boats.

In the afternoon we drove north with the intention of visiting some of Marlborough's wineries, however this plan was based on Anna being able to drink wine. Instead of visiting wineries we found ourselves visiting an out of hours doctors (it was ANZAC Day, a bank holiday in memory of their armed forces) and Anna being prescribed antibiotics. Not a major drama, but Anna was no longer allowed wine, much to her disappointment! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing boring stuff like getting food and petrol and driving to the campsite. This was along a wiggly cliff road but we found a lovely site just set back from a sheltered beach. We had a paddle in the freezing water, our first paddle in the Pacific Ocean (and hopefully the coldest). More excitingly, when it got dark we visited a glow worm grotto on the stream just outside the campsite. Once our eyes got used to the light there were thousands of little green glowing spots which was pretty special.

In the morning we had another walk around the beach and then drove to Nelson. This was on a main road but was still very wiggly and took longer than we thought. We ate lunch of shapes (little savoury biscuits (buscuts*) enriched with the flavour enhancer yummy yummy msg, which makes everything taste amazing!) and dip in the gardens below the cathedral and then had a look around the shops. Anna bought a book about posh people going to the poles from a weird 2nd hand book shop and we got the soundtrack to Pricilla, Queen of the Desert (I know, too cool) from a op shop.

We then went to find the orchard that produced the tasty boysenberry cider that was mentioned in previous blogs but they were unfriendly and didn't like visitors or selling cider so we turned around and headed towards a campsite. We'd decided to camp on the Marlborough sounds as there was the potential for a relaxing day of beaches and water activities the following day. Unfortunately this meant driving along 28km of extremely wiggly narrow roads in the dusk, but we were rewarded with a nice site and camped next to two friendly people called Andy and Dave, who had been cycling around Queen Charlotte Sound.

As we were eating breakfast Andy and Dave realised they were in the wrong place to catch a boat that was departing shortly and they had too much stuff. Being friendly, we gave their bags a lift and saw them make their boat. By this time we'd realised there really wasn't much to do in the area so took the extremely wiggly road back along the peninsula (it wasn't so bad in the day light) and drove on to Picton. We booked into a campsite and then sat and ate lunch on the foreshore surrounded by ducks and little brown birds that were quicker than the ducks to the bread. We'd a very enjoyable game of mini golf then walked around the marina and spied Andy and Dave paddling up to the shore in a double kayak. We arranged to meet them later for tea (fush and chups*) and a drink. Fush and chups were very tasty as were the Kiwi beers but Anna got bored of sugary soft drinks (re: antibiotics).

We were late to bed and neither of us felt particularly bouncy the following morning. Luckily we only had the short drive to the ferry terminal to make by lunch time. We managed this and Anna enjoyed the views of the Sounds from the ferry while I slept curled up on a reclining chair.

And so we left South Island, next stop Wellington...

* A note on Kiwi pronunciation.
They replace 'i' and occasional other vowels with 'u' hence buscuts and fush and chups and it all sounds quite funny. Other words we've heard them say and had to stifle giggles to are: pucnuc, chrustmus, chucken, yus.