02/04/09

We woke up and actually got out of bed surprisingly early. Pat went to Global Gossip while the rest of us stripped the beds and went to do the washing. Rich and I wandered up and down the street checking diesel prices as we had nothing else to do, it's really expensive here and we're going to have to fill up. We put the washing in the dryer and then sat in the coffee shop next door. Rich managed to amuse us by asking random questions from the paper which we managed to get fairly accurate answers to. He pulled out the Liquor Express flyer from in side and asked us to guess the prices of all the deals they had on, a good game if you have nothing else to do.

We got back to the camper and then went for a wander around the main area of town. We enquired in the info Site about fishing, dolphin and seal tours. We decided we wanted to do a seal tour so went to the shop, the tour was leaving in 5 minutes but the woman wouldn't let us go on the tour even though we told her it would only take us 5 mintues to run to the camper to pick up our swiming things. So we went to the camper and had lunch, then went back in to town to use the internet and go to the book swap. The woman only offered $2 for each book so we decided to keep them until we could actually swap them. We all waited for what seemed like an eternity for Coops to finish in the toilet and then drove to the Seal Colony. We didn't see a single seal, only rocks and seaweed. On the way back we saw a lookout and decided to go for it. I took the crazily steep path directly to the top and was shattered when I got there. As we were leaving we noticed a little round fat girl eyeing up the the steep path, she took a few minutes before getting the courage to attempt it but stacked it right on her arse and rolled down the hill before she'd even started. We all had a good laugh and then went to another lookout.

We ate really early for once because the camper battery was completely dead. As we were able to park so close to town we decided to go out to the Whaler for the thursday night quiz, which was scheduled to begin at half 8 but didn't actually start until half 9. I had my first beer since Raglan, and for once we actually started off the quiz fairly well. At the end of the first round, general knowledge, we were in joint second place so we had to complete a boat race for the decider. This involved 4 people skulling a pot of beer in order, we all managed to give Coops a hell of a head start, but unfortunately she didn't managed to finish it. The second round was Physics and Chemistry, which I think we did quite well on but they never read out the answers, then we managed to get 17 of 20 on the movie villians round. It all went downhill from here on, the questions started getting really obscure, the round was called History and its Leaders, and every question was a 'how did they die' question, so it was pretty much guess work.

03/04/09

Had a bad nights sleep, I woke up after a few hours sleep shivering and couldn't get back to sleep. About an hour later Coops woke up because she was cold, so we laid there chatting for a bit. Coops managed to get back to sleep, eventually the alarm went off at 7 and I got up and drove to the other side of Kaikoura stopping off at the public loos on the way to brush my teeth. We scoffed some breakfast and Coops finally got out of bed with 5 minutes to spare before we had to board the Takapu Fishing Charters boat. All the guys seemed like friendly chaps, but as they started donning their fishing suits with wipe clean surfaces, gum boots and sharp knives straped round their waists I started to worry that I may get a little bit of blood on my clothes.

I was wearing jandals and my feet were once again freezing cold. The captain drove us out to sea and they picked up their Crayfish trap, it was filled with them. They have strick guidlines about throwing back the undersized ones, so they measure them and then chuck the good ones in a bucket. I don't think Helen liked it when the crew started chucking them in the buckets, she looked horrified. Before we left I was actually wondering if I would catch a fish or not, but after the crew had set our lines up Helen dropped her line in, 100m deep, and the moment it hit the bottom she had a bite. I put mine down and also had a bite the moment it hit the bottom. I reeled it in, which seemed to take forever, and really made my arm ache. When I pulled it up I had a Sea Perch on each of the 3 hooks, it was awesome. Everyone else had pretty much the same story, fish were soon pouring on to the deck. We'd hang our fish over the edge and the crew would spin them off the hook on to the deck, then come along with a bat with a hook on the end and wack them on the head, pick them up with the hook and gut them.

After a while of us all catching Sea Perch and getting a few lines tangled up Coops caught a Blue Cod, it was pretty big, Rich then caught one as well. Not long after that Helen and Coops both pulled up a line with 2 Blue Cod on each. As the crew were getting more and more fish heads knocking about they started throwing them overboard, seagulls, sea pigeons and ollywocks were fighting for the pieces. Then a load of Albatross glided down and took over. They were huge, their wings were so big they took ages folding them away, they had to fold them in 3 places. Some of them looked really evil. We continued to fish for about 2 hours, and must have pulled in at least 30 fish each. All of Pat and mine had been the standard Sea Perch until my last line where I managed to get good old bluey on the line. On the way back the crew pulled up another Crayfish cage which only had 2 in it, 1 of which had to be thrown away.

When we got back to shore we were handed a couple of crayfish in a bag, 1 huge bag of blue cod and 2 bags of sea perch, which we stashed in the fridge straigh away. When we got back in to town I noticed that my hoody which I had washed yesterday had a huge white stain on it and I had fish guts on my toes and up my shorts.

We spent the afternoon aranging other activities for the next couple of days and chilling out. Coops and I had a paper aeroplane contest which she managed to win. The girls shallow fried the fish in flour in the evening while the lads and I went and picked up some chips. I was nackered after having b***** all sleep last night and ended up passing out whilst watching X-Men 2.

04/04/09

Had another restless night, Coops and I were chatting for most of it. We didn't have to get up early so we laid in bed and listened to some music for a while then watched 3 episodes of the Simpsons before I finally had to go for a slash. There were people everywhere, but I was desperate and had to just go in the sea in full view of everyone.

Rich drove us to the camp site we had decided to plug in to. Then the girls and I walked to the Seal Swim shop where we spent the next half hour struggling to get in to all the equipment. We had wet-suits, body jackets, wet shoes fins and snorkels. The body jackets had a flap at the back which had to be pulled between your legs then up to the front and velcroed in place, it was so tight. We were driven to the same location as the fishing charters started yesterday, but instead of there being only 6 of us on the boat there were 12. We got in the water and all the time spent putting the kit on certainly paid off, only my face and hands felt the cold, and my armpits when I moved my arms. The only downside was that it was impossible to swim about, because all the kit made us so boyant it was impossible to keep the fins in the water to move about.

For the first half hour we got to see quite a few fur seals swimming around, they were within 3 metres of us playfully swimming around underneat us, as if they were showing off, it was pretty cool. They seemed to lose interest with us and swam away, the guides spent the next hour and a half attempting to locate some more playful ones but weren't successful. On the way to one location a guy managed to lose his snorkel from the top of his head. We got to see big families of them sitting on the rocks out at sea though. A few guys went back in the water to check out the fish near all the sea-weed, one guy got really close to the rocks and a huge wave knocked him right in to them. He lost his snorkel a fin and cut all his wet suit open, the guides didn't seem too impressed with him. We were taken back to shore, a little dissapointed that we hadn't got to spend more time with the seals. Probably due to the fact that the group was much bigger than it was supposed to be.

We wandered back to the camp site, Coops and I got some wedges on the way back, and spent the afternoon laying in the sun as it was such good weather. A couple pulled up alongside us later on that had just got their campervan from Christchurch, so we had a good chat about all the things that could possibly go wrong with it, and they seemed grateful for the heads up.

Coops cooked a Fish Pie for dinner. We put a bit of Cod, Perch and Crayfish in it. I decided to sort out the crayfish. I gave it a slit down the middle as we had been instructed, and soon realised that I had cut through the poop shoot, so I twisted the tail clean off, picked the jiblets out followed by the poo pipe then snapped all its legs off and washed the fish. The end result was amazing though, one of my favourite meals so far. We had an oven to bake it in so the mash actually crisped off for once. If I had it again I wouldn't put the crayfish in with it though, it's far too chewy. The guys attempted to sleep early so they could get up to watch the football at about midnight, I don't think Rich got any sleep because Coops and I were making far too much noise. Pat as usual was out like a light, right next to Helen who was having some gas issues following the Fish Pie. When Pat woke up to go to the football he thought the heater was causing the smell.

05/04/09

Another bad night sleep. Managed to get about 2 hours then the girls and I had to get up at quarter to 5, which was actually quarter to 6 because the clocks had turned back. It was freezing cold and I just couldn't imagine myself swimming in the Pacific at this hour. we gathered all our stuff together, dragged Rich away from the TV room where he and Pat were watching endless football, and drove toward the Dolphin Encounter. The screen was so frosty that I had to drive at 10km/h the whole way, and it still hadn't even started to clear by the time we had arrived. Rich drove back to the football and we walked in to the reception where we were fitted out with another wet suit. Again, the one I was given was too big for my legs and too small for my torso, so I chose to go one size smaller to make sure my legs would stay warm, and suffer the pain in my area. I was quite worried that we had no wet socks. By the time I'd got in to the suit the girls were already sat in the auditorium watching the hillarious video of how not to snorkel with dolphins. A few more people showed up after me, some of them already wearing their fins, walking like tards and making a racket, we all had a good laugh at that. When we went outside to get on the bus the sky was the most amazing deep orange above the sea horizon that blended in to clear blue, I didn't manage to get a photo because my fingers were too cold.

We arrived at the jetty, again where the Fishing Charter had departed and got on the boat. We sailed for roughly half an hour, during which time the sun slowly rose above the horizon and started glaring down. I couldn't stop worrying about how cold the water was going to be the entire time. It wasn't long before the guide pointed out the window, I was expecting to see 1 or possibly 2 dolphins, when I looked out I could see hundreds of them all swimming along and leaping out of the water, it was amazing, I've never seen anything like it.

We all lined up on the back of the boat and waited for the horn to signal that the prop had stopped before we slipped in. It was so cold as it leaked in to the suit, but within 10 seconds I had seen so many dolphins I wasn't thinking about that any more. There were groups of 5 all swimming right up close to my face, and as I turned on my side, so did they and the swam in circles around me, it was amazing.

There were literally hundreds of them, all playfull and enquisitive. We spent an hour or so hopping in and out of the water at different sites swiming with them. We had been told to make noises as they liked it and would swim closer to check it out. It was rather amusing swiming next to Helen and Coops and listening to them through their snorkels constantly making weird noises. Before I knew it we were getting out and stripping off the wet-suits and having a steaming cup of hot chocolate with the hardest ginger-nuts in the world. By this time Coops was feeling rather sick, and the rocking of the boat didn't help at all. We got a chance to take photos and I ended up taking over 200 on burst shot. On the way back, going through the photos I experienced my first feeling of sea sickness. It was awful, we were all sat out the back of the boat but it was freezing, so I had to warm up by moving inside, but the front end was jumping up and down like crazy and it didn't take long for me to have to leg it to the back and pick up a bucket, I was so close to spewing, but couldn't, all I wanted to do for the next what seemed like eternity on the way back was chunder but it just wouldn't come out, I felt like s***.

We got back and had roasting hot showers to warm us up, I made the most of them and thawed out my hands and feet. Rich picked us up again at about half 9 and we drove back to the camp site where we had crumpets, cups of tea and just sorted out all the bits a pieces to do with the camper. We spent forever trying to empty the waste again, but we couldn't be bothered to wait we had overstayed our welcome and they could clearly see that there were 5 of us and not 4. I drove off heading towards route 7 to cut back across the country, feeling absolutely nackered after an icy cold dip in the Pacific at 6am and 3 nights of pretty much no sleep at all. After 3 hours driving we stopped at the town we were in and decided to get some grub for lunch. We could only find bread, but we had no filling so lunch didn't happen. The diesel was cheap so we decided to top off the tank.

I pulled in to the pumps actually pointed at the diesel pump on the way and proceeded to fill it up. As I was filling it up, I was a bit confused by the price, it said $30 odd for 22 litres, it took a second or two to register before I let go of the handle and shouted f***!! Trust me to do it with the V-Power stuff and not the regular. All I could think of doing was to get the hose out and siphon it out as quickly as possible, but we had nowhere to put it, there was far too much of it and our only hose was our water hose. I decided it best to pay for the petrol and push the van out of the way while I phoned Dad to see if the proportions I had put in would be ok to leave, not sure he appreciated being woken up at 4am on a Sunday, but I'm sure he was only to happy to help. We came to the conclusion that 22 lites in an 80 litre tank apparetnly is a little too much. I jogged back to the petrol station and hesitantly phoned Apollo's 24 hour roadside assistance knowing that it would cost me a bomb. They don't work Sundays so they called an AA guy for us who showed up after an hour. He did a great job, and by 5 we were on our way again. The total cost of the damage was $145 for the AA service $40 of V-Power Undleaded and $60 to refil the camper again. I went to pay for the diesel at the end, the woman saw me coming and holding cash so she hit the cash button on her till before I got there, this now meant that I couldn't use my 4c of a litre now and there was nothing she could do about it.

I was relatively happy now that it had all been sorted, we weren't going to be stuck at a petrol station over night, and it only cost me about 100 quid in total. I certainly wont be making that mistake again any time soon. I drove off along scenic route 72 and we stopped to get chicken for the curry in some town. They had a deal on chocolate so I bought some as I'd eaten b***** all today. I was shattered so drove another 40k and found a park site where we could camp for the night. It was only 6pm. Coops was still feeling ill, possibly also to do with the lack of sleep and freezing early morning conditions. I was exhausted. The other 3 cooked up a wicked curry with plenty of spuds in it. I ended up having to take a dump in the woods, and was in bed by half 8.