We arrived in Kaikoura around 5:00pm on Friday after spending most of the day travelling on boat and train. We left Wellington in the morning and proceeded to head North to the South Island. No, really!! The ferry must be the biggest boat ever, as the thing was so big that it not only took passengers and cars and coaches, but they also put the train on it as well. It was very odd watching the cars drive out of one level and a train going along the tracks underneath them!!

The crossing was really calm and the journey provided us with some spectacular views of Cook's Straight and the islands, and once we reached Picton it was straight onto the Tranz Scenic train for another three hours journey to the town of Kaikoura. Again, as the name would suggest, the train journey gave us some great views, as the route that it takes carves straight through the countryside, and right up alongside the hills and mountains, and then along the coast as well.

The town of Kaikoura is pretty small, but it is one of the few places in the world where there is an oceanic plate so close to the coastline, which results in outstanding views all around, with the beach and sea to one side and mountains topped with snow on the other.

On our one and only full day in the town, we had booked ourselves onto a sightseeing trip with a bit of a twist. We were going whale watching!

When we woke up we were greeted with views of the mountains right outside our hostel, and everyone telling us what a great day it was to go find whales. Apparently, the weather over the last few days before had been pretty downcast, so we had timed the trip perfectly. When we got to the whale watch centre we were told that one of the trips that had already gone out had spotted a couple that morning, so things were looking good for us.

The boat that we went out on was like nothing we had expected. It was ultra modern and pretty damn quick, but the display on the huge computer screen was a little disturbing. As we were going out over the edge of the oceanic plate, the display showing how deep the water was beneath the boat suddenly shot up from 100 metres, to 1,600 metres. Not that either of us had any intention of testing out this reading, but it was a bit of a shock none the less.

Once we were out in the open, we spent the first half hour chasing around trying to see some sperm whales only to get to each place too late, but then all of a sudden we started to see more and more. The first one we saw was rolling around in the water for about ten minutes, but when he (they are all male here due to the cold waters) dived down, there was no tale in the air so we were told he would only be down for about 30 minutes. Only!!

We went on a little further and caught sight of another whale on the surface. It wasn't until a couple of minutes later that we saw another whale just a few metres away. Apparaetly, these whales normally stay a couple of miles apart, but there must have been a lot of fish about for them to get so close to each other. A little while later, this was demonstrated to us in an amazing way.

The boat travelled around for a few minutes when we came across a whale who appeared to just be resting on the surface. However, after a couple of minutes it's head shot out of the water and it grabbed a huge fish in its mouth, before going back under the water again. We were told by the boat crew that this was such a rare occurence that scientists refuse to believe that whales surface feed, so to see something like that was pretty cool.

On our way back to the centre we stopped a couple more times to see whales swimming about, diving under water with their tales raised high and even another one poling it's head out of the water too. It was a pretty amazing experience as we had seen things that very rarely occur, and even though you can only see one tenth of the total size of the whales they were still huge.

We spent the rest of the afternoon, wandering around the little town and enjoying the sun while we could, before heading back to the hostel once again.

Today we were back on the move, getting the Intercity bus back up to Picton to meet up with the Experience bus once again. From here it was on to Nelson, which gets about 200 hours more sunshine than the rest of New Zealand each year, so hopefully the next couple of days here should be a little warmer than we have become accustomed to!