Today we woke up relatively early and had some breakfast before deciding to do the walk up and around the Kaikoura Peninsula. The walk was beautiful, amazing views from lakes to hills, mountains to sea. The best bit ofcourse though... Seals! Seals seals and more seals. They were so closer we could touch (not that we dared to). We saw babies and fully grown seals and the noise they make is so so strange. We got some good pictures before carrying on to find the p...

Up and out the door early today as we had to be at the dolphin encounter office by 8am. After checking in there was just enough time for a hot chocolate before being called through to the fitting room to grab our wetsuits, flippers and masks. We quickly changed and then went to a briefing which told us all about the morning we had ahead of us and about the animals we would see and how to interact with them. A 30 minute boat journey later we were perched on th...

Today we travelled from Picton to Kaikoura. Picton was a sleepy seaside town, the main port for the ferrys traveling between north and South Island. We didn't do a great deal in Picton other than wander about the town. There is a walk to do there but we shall do that on our stop over before north island. Our hostel was lovely and served free hot apple crumble and (cold) icecream in the evening which was a lovely homely touch! The trip to Kaikoura was only 3 ho...