Monday 7th August - Ouch, owwww! We must be so unfit, our muscles in our arms and shoulders are killing!! Fortunately not doing much today but driving to our next stop, kaikoura, which is about 300 km away. Laura survived the entire day in the kayak in one piece but has managed to hurt her wrist climbing out of the boat that picked us up at the very end! Hoping it's nothing serious but we're keeping a close eye on it. Drive to Kaikoura was pretty uneventful until we got just outside the town and there was sign for seals in the road for the next 4km!! And they weren't wrong! OK so they weren't actually in the road but the road ran right by the sea front and the rocks there were covered in seals! Hundreds of them! Pulled over and you could get really close, hopefully we got some good pics. Went to the tourist info place in Kaikoura centre. This is a really small town but all places seem to have them, called i-sites. They're really useful. We talked to them about what's the best way to go whale watching tomorrow, which is what Kaikoura is famous for. Depending on the weather you can do it by boat or plane! So we'll keep you updated. Watch this space, hopefully for some pics of whales!! Tuesday 8th August - The wind is too stong for the boats to go out whale watching so we're doing it by plane! Exciting! Sadly also a waste of time as we saw nothing! Ok so that wasn't quite true, we didn't see any whales but the plane ride was cool! Never been in such a small plane, only us and the pilot! Once the pilot realised we weren't going to find anything he took us over some of the big seal colonies and over kaikoura itself. So was good fun but gutted we didn't see any whales. We headed over to the west coast in the afternoon, a pretty long drive but fun! It took us through the mountains and up to over 900metres and above the snow line! Sadly not enough snow for us to get the snow chains out(yes we do have them), I was getting hopeful! So we arrived in a town called Westport just after dark and that was about it! Oh hang on a min, I didn't tell you about the cray fish! Kaikoura is famous for it (I think the name means literally eat crayfish or something!) You can buy it from little huts at the side of the road. So we stopped thinking you get some cooked in a little pot or something! But oh no, you buy the whole thing and they cut it in half for you! It didn't help that all it's insides were still in it which puts you off a little, but after cleaning it out we tried it and honestly.....it was disgusting!!! Absolutely horrible! Think maybe we picked the wrong shack to buy it from! Ah well, at least we tried it!