The puncture repair held good until about 5am when an over-exuberant bout of snoring evidently dislodged the patch and commenced our steady descent towards the plywood floor. Before I could sneak away for my morning run Bob requested an interim re-inflation as my absence had severely compromised her levels of comfort. The sound of me trying to surupticiously pump up the failing air bed caused a sudden eruption of laughter from Jono's tent and by the time Bob had her cup of tea, Mr. Motivator himself was limbering up for a 'free-letics' session and a short run along the front.

We scrambled to grab a highly acclaimed in-house-roasted coffee from the 'Reserve Hut' before the whale-watching trip commenced and were not disappointed. We boarded the space age catamaran having received a full safety briefing and a surprise viewing of a small but rare pod of Hector's dolphins off the shore at the whale centre. The powerful cat took off and blasted out to sea whilst we received a blue planet style documentary on all the species which we could come into contact with. After only 20 minutes at Mach 3 we nearly ran over a 45 year old sleeping sperm whale called Tiaki (the protector). We suddenly felt very small watching the leviathan doze, occasionally exhaling a water spout before slipping beneath the waves seemingly forgetting to give us a wave of his tail.

We zoomed away, scoffing cookies, and after some more info from Kaikoura's answer to David Attenborough, we tracked down a 300 strong pod of Dusky dolphins who lived up to their reputation of being incredibly playful, jumping, tail slapping and surfing through our wake.

We returned to shore very satisfied and headed north towards Blenheim. A lunch stop at Ohau gave such a fantastic view of the seal pups lolloping around their crèche that Jono decided to smash his plate in excitement (apparently it was a bumblebee's fault...)

We cruised on, arriving in Blenheim's Warehouse to replace the punctured air bed (and plate), before tracking down some awesome steaks. We treated ourselves to icecreams before again sneaking into the campsite with Jono hidden under many bags.

Sadly this campsite was being patrolled by an officious gimp in a very shiney uniform, with a badge and clipboard so Jono spent a lot of time hiding in the toilets. In the meantime Bob had discovered that the new delux air bed that I had lovingly selected was infact very much the wrong size (apparently a 'twin-size' only accommodates one person in NZ...) Back to Warehouse I went and it took all the tricks in my book of smarm to get the battle-axes to begrudging perform the exchange, thus saving me an undoubtably uncomfortable night in a very small tent with Jono...
I returned to a smorgasbord of porterhouse steak, rump steak (in a questionable soy snd honey sauce) and potato salad, all eaten by the light of Mark and Fi's atmospheric Christmas candle.

After a few hands of cards and the introduction of 'Scroggin' to our evening cup of tea and toffee-pop regime, we inflated the new air bed and tentatively turned in.