Well, I sampled the most amazing seafood chowder but a couple of hours ago en route to Kaikoura in the South Island -yes, I'm finally here! Stopped off at a place called The Store which produced this culinary masterpiece -so groovy I took it's photo! Had a quick stop off in a spot of drizzle to go "aahh" at a colony of NZ fur seals - quite a few...

This stop will always be one of my favourites: we saw real whales! :) The road into Kaikoura was pretty nice with the green hills on one side and the beautiful coastline on the other, at one point and only a few kilometres outside of the town, we saw hundreds of fur seals by the sea just playing, magical to see! Kaikoura itself is small and tour...

We really enjoyed staying in this hostel, it's called "Watson's Way" and is 30 mins from the ferry, which was perfect for us. Loads of amenities, and even free bread to make toast in the morning ! It's always the smaller details... We were up and out before 9:30am, and had a good talk through our next few days in the car before heading off. We d...

Well, 11 degrees is a little bit of a shock to the system when you are used to 38 degree heat. We arrived in Kaikoura to rain, grey skies and freezing cold winds!! Thankfully the weather did brighten up a lot the next day and we were on the 8:30am boat out to sea to swim with dusky dolphins. After taking sea sickness tablets I concentrated on th...

Busy weekend planned..or half planned i suppose you could say.. It was all Super 14 rugby again friday nite for the Crusaders last home game.. so myself, alison, suzzana, brian, karl and cliff got tickets for the Tui's stand and in we went. You have no option but to drink the Tui's beer once in but this week they didnt give me any free stuff but...

the day got off to a bad start as i reversed my ´ride´ (a 1995 nissan sunny) into a low level loading bay (i couldn´t see it in the rear view mirror). kristian, a german chap i had met the night before helped me to do a crafty repair job with nothing more than a penknife. we headed out to see the whales, and were not disappointed, seeing 2 sperm...

DAY 11 SAT We rose really early, partly to hit the road and partly to beat the large family in the next room to the showers. Yesterday had been sunny so, as expected, today it was raining. We stopped for breakfast at Murchison, ninety minutes from Nelson and struggled to finish enormous ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches (toasted) which left us f...

Kaikoura is beautiful, on the rugged East Coast. One the way here we saw a seal colony. you can walk right up to them. It's not that touristy here, and nature is all around you! The main reason for coming here was to go whale watching. Unfortunately on Monday the waves were too big so it would've been really rough so we stayed a night. Unfortuna...

Hello! ok so after spending a couple days in christchurch which was a really pretty old-english like city on the east coast of the south island, ive moved onto kaikoura. somehow, even if it looks like the weather is gonna suck for me, the weather always clears up just in time! yesterday when driving in here it was cloudy and gross but we could s...

Started our next journey...travelling up the east coast our first stop being Kaikoura - the beautiful coast full of marine life..including Whales, Seals, Dolphins and Albatross. We stayed here for two nights in a lovely B&B, very friendly lady looked after us called Judy. She loved making chocolate muffins to share with her guests so obviously w...