We arrived in Kaikora, booked into a hotel called Donegal House (must be Welsh) and set off to the harbour (they call it the Whaleway Station - corny). We had heard that a man called Captain Ahab was looking for crew to join him in his quest for a whale - He had a wild look in his eye and a patch over his other eye, his first mate had only one leg and a missing index finger from his right hand …… They looked dodgy so we signed up with a guy called Jason who seemed far more trustworthy. After two hours at sea, a cry of "thar she blows" came from the "Crow's Nest" and we saw our first whale at close quarters, it broke the surface blowing water 10 metres high from its spout - WOW. The sight of a fully grown sperm whale, rising completely out of the water, breaching and crashing back onto the surface is magnificent ….. or so they say, our whale failed to perform this manoeuvre. Heather did however capture the "money shot" of the whale's tail vertically aloft as he/she dived back to the deep. We saw another three whales in the course of our voyage - apparently Captain Ahab only found one.

Blenheim was our next stop, not Winston Churchill's birthplace but the centre of the Marlborough wine region and the home of Heather's favourite wine, which is Villa Maria. A quick tour of wineries, including VM ensued with Dan driving and Heather testing - a not entirely fair arrangement but as luck would have it, the Marlborough wine festival was taking place the following day …. So catch-up time. The festival was an excellent day plenty of sun, food, music and wine. The headline music act was "The Wellington International Ukulele Band" and it says a lot for the potency of the wine, that we along with the entire crowd loved them, encores were called and people sang and danced all the way to the buses - Happy Days.