After arriving on the South Island there were only two weeks left and far too many things to see, so we had narrowed down our "things to see". First stop was Kaikoura, for the Whale-watching. We caught the weather on a good day, it was very cloudy, but we were told that it was perfect weather and sea conditions for viewing the whales. So we headed out on our extremely expensive boat to find some Sperm Whales. They were named sperm whales because the whalers found a a "sperm-look-a-like" substance in their heads, (which they didn't know was actually an oil/wax) and so nicknamed them as such. The sperm whale is the second or third largest whale in the world (not sure which). We only waited a matter of minutes before our first sighting, our boat seemed to get around 50 metres away from the whale which would stay above water, getting oxygen for 15 minutes or so, before diving back to the bottom of the ocean. In total we saw six whales, and we got fairly close to each of them. The best part was seeing them dive back under, where you would see the whale arch it's back then flip out it's huge tail to gain power to dive as deep as possible. Then as we had seen more whales than the average trip and there was time to spare, we headed over to see the Dusky Dolphins. There was a pod of around 6-700 dolphins swimming with our boat which was incredible. The Dusky Dolphin is the most acrobatic dolphin, so you often seen them jumping out of the water doing a number of somersaults, flips and other random acrobatic trips. You would think it was all done for the tourists, but it's actually used to catch fish. But either way, we just thought it looked so cool and got some great photos and videos of them in action.

The next day, we were up early and headed over Lewis' Pass, a beautiful cross-island drive via Hanmer Springs, which has become a relatively famous (by NZ standards) hot spa resort!!!! We then spent the rest of the day chilling out in the numerous thermal baths and catching a little bit of sun.