Burnham - Kaikoura
Kaikoura - Picton
Picton - Wellington

Thursday the 21st of June marks the start of our Great New Zealand Road Trip. (recognise the theme?). Our first stop from Burnham was at a McCafe getting hot drinks for the journey up to our first destination, Kaikoura.

Kaikoura, while it has a grim history of whaling the town has managed to turn their fortunes around with the Maoris having complete monopoly of the Whale Watching business.

Obviously, we stopped here for a reason. Kaikoura is an ideal feeding ground for many different species as the ocean continental shelf drops to 1600m so close to shore. Both of us wouldn't like to dive here, what with the near freezing water temperatures and the huge drop off on the continental shelf. Having said that, it is a dream to dive with Whales.

Our first stop was the Seal Colony at Point Kean where we saw loads of NZ fur seals lounging about. Helen was so excited as she never got to see any in Australia. We even found two sleeping in the car park. So cute! (see pic)

The next day we went Whale watching with Whale Watch (the only company in the area...maybe this could be a new business venture for us! Any takers?). We set off in a nice catamaran style boat, and before long the crew saw a whale however, it was too late as by the time we got there it had already dived so we set off again. But it wasn't long before we saw 2 enormous sperm whales, which was amazing and we both took loads of photos.

[Another science lesson; Sperm Whales grow up to 15-20 metres long and can stay submerged for 40-60 minutes diving to a depth of 1000 metres plus. But how they do it is amazing, the Sperm Whale has a huge sac in their head/nose which includes spermaceti (2.5 tonnes worth) - the whale has the ability to cool it at the surface making it solid wax so they are heavy to dive and while at depth they have the ability to warm it up melting the spermaceti to enable them to ascend. Amazing or what? We know Helen should apply to be the next David Attenborough!]

A bonus was seeing some seals swimming and different species of Albatrosses diving. We would have liked to have seen some Hector Dolphins, but we can't have everything! Next time! On the way back to the harbour, we had views of Kaikoura with the snow capped Seaward Kaikoura range in the background. Where else in the world do you see the sea and mountains!

After the Whale Watching we set off for Picton taking in stunning coastal views, the road was hugging the beach at some point, rolling hills, paddocks, trees and the ocean. On the way we saw some mummy seals 'sun' bathing with their cubs playing, we missed out on the amazing seal waterfall everyone raves about but will definitely make a stop there on the way back to Christchurch in a couple of weeks time. Both of us were driving in utter quietness as we were just in awe of the scenery (nice to have some peace and quiet). New Zealand is definitely a gem and beautiful in its own right.

Picton was our stop for the night as its only 5 minutes from the ferry terminal, where we would catch our ferry the following day for the Northern Island of New Zealand.