Kaikoura, 9th - 10th August 2010

Kaikoura is situated on the coast and where it's not surrounded by the sea there are vast snowy topped mountain ranges.

The sea here is one of the prettiest I've seen and there's such a diverse range of colours it looks like a painting. The sky is moody and is a dark bluey grey and the sea is completely green. Nearer the shore it is a sage colour and looks icy, like its just broken off of a glacier. The deeper the sea gets the deeper green it becomes. The waves are so big that a mist comes off the top of them, the surge looks like white foam and its all crashing onto black sand. It's absolutely stunning, and when you turn round you're faced with snow covered mountains.

Unfortunately the South island is currently experiencing a bad cold spell and as most of the activities are outdoors a lot of them aren't operating.

The main attraction in Kaikoura is the Whale watching where you can go out on a boat or airplane and watch the blue whales migrating. We've heard another good place to see this is in Sydney and as it will be a lot hotter when we're there hopefully the weather won't be an issue. :)

We're only going to stay here for 1 night and are catching the Magic bus tomorrow morning up to Picton and then down the West coast to Greymouth. I'm a bit worried about the West coast as it is meant to be quite a bit colder than the east coast and with the current cold spell it's meant to be down to -5, and that's without the wind chill factor as everywhere we're going in on or very near the coast.

I have no idea what the temperature is here but it's bitterly cold. We're currently sat in the hostel's living room, right in front of the fire which I've been throwing logs onto all afternoon. I could watch the fire for hours so don't mind spending an afternoon like this, however as soon as you move even 2 meters away it is freezing. So much so the water on the street has stopped and they think it's because its frozen!

I think if we were staying in hotels it might be different, but most hostels have heaters on 30 minute timers so it never really warms up and the hostel we're in at the moment doesn't turn the heating on til 5pm, which is ridiculous.

We started talking last night about how long we're going to spend in New Zealand. The original plan was 6 weeks and we've already been here a couple of weeks, but it's so cold neither of us think we are going to be able to last another month here. It's also because everything is so weather dependant so rather than chilling in each location everyone is getting in, seeing what there is to see and leaving.I reckon we'll probably be done in a couple of weeks, but we will see and of course I shall keep you posted.

Wow, that's it. I can't believe I'm actually up-to-date with my Blogs. :)

Xx.