Whale watching, beer tasting and mussel chomping in Marlborough and Nelson...

It all feels a little strange really. We've been in NZ now for a month and we've had, believe it or not, only one day which was slightly wet- even then it was only a shower. Not bad for a wet country in the midst of Autumn! Everyday has just been beautiful, cold nights for sure but clear skies every day. Easy to get used to! With that in mind we parted Christchurch for a second time but this time heading north towards the wine regions and all that Sauvignon Blanc! First up was a small town a few kilometres inland from the Coastal highway, Hanmer Springs. As the Easter holidays had now finished and all of NZ were seemingly tucked up in their homes, the town was eerily quiet. Anyway, the next day we did what came out here for and paid our entrance money to spend the day in a series of geothermal hot pools. There were around twenty pools in total ranging from everyday jacuzzis to large, open hotpools, all between 35-40 degrees celcius. Apart from being stared at for the entire time by a strange lifeguard and sharing the pools with what seemed like New Zealand's entire nursing home population we had an awesome time, we came out like shrivelled prunes!

From the beauty of Hanmer Springs we drove onwards towards the coast past, amazingly, Sheffield, Rotherham and Chesterfield (really) and towards Kaikoura, a place most famous for it's abundance of wildlife, especially its whale population. It seems, according to our guide the next morning, that from the beach the sea depth is only around 80 metres and then all of a sudden, around a kilometre from the beach, drops almost 800 metres due to a huge continental shelf. Ocean currents then push nutrients that would otherwise lay at the bottom of the sea up from depths of nearly a kilometre to the relative shallow waters above. This creates a perfect feeding ground for large deep ocean marine life to feed so close to the shore. Although we've nearly run out of money we knew that whale watching would be one of those things, whatever the cost, that we just had to do. It was expensive but then the three hours we spent on the boat were some of the most memorable we have spent..anywhere. After getting to the freezing wharf just before sunrise we waited for the boat to pick us up and take us out to sea. As we stood there the sea and sky in front of us turned a kaleidoscope of different colours as the sun slowly but surely climbed its way over the sea's horizon. Reds, oranges and deep purples slowly appeared and the bright sun on our faces told us that we would soon stop shivering. Momentous news. Soon enough we were on the boat with a crew made up of genial Maori's, all explaining what we would be doing over the next few hours. After about ten minutes we caught our first glimpse of native wildlife as we sailed passed a pod of maybe a hundred dolphins, all vying to gain our attention. The guys only gave us five minutes to get acquainted with these beautiful animals before we were off again, in search of bigger mammals, a great sign of things to come.

After searching for maybe an hour (by a guy sticking a specially made piece of sound equipment to pick up whale communication in the water) we saw our first sight of this most impressive of animals, a giant, twenty-five metre Sperm Whale. We stood there on the top deck just staring. What a sight. It's in moments like these, on a boat in the Pacific, looking at one of the worlds biggest animals, that you understand exactly why you are here. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of gentle lolling we were informed by the captain that our whale had, well, fallen to sleep. We did return an hour or so later but by this point the whale was in an even deeper sleep, so much so that he was now vertical in the water with his scar strewn head bobbing gently out of the water. Different to what we expected but fantastic to see. On the way back, as if we had not already seen enough, we were lucky enough to see a huge albatross, a seal, many more dolphins and a shark. Such a great morning. One of the best.

In the afternoon, after our early morning exploits we found the nearest coffee shop and refuelled for a circumnavigation around the Kaikoura Peninsula, one of NZ's great walks. It didn't disappoint. We walked around the coastline for three hours in a large loop finishing 11 kilometres later back at the campervan. The walk took us past some of the old whaling grounds where we stood slack jawed after learning of the old whaling techniques at the turn of the last century. At least we finally got to know where, "there she blows!!" came from. From Kaikoura we headed north and into wine country. We had entered Marlborough district. One of the places we had both sat dreaming about on our sofa before we set off last September. Unfortunately, as the weather looked a bit dodgy for the next few days we decided to leave the wine-tasting-by-bicycle for a few days until something a bit calmer was forecast. So on we went, past Blenhiem and onwards towards Nelson, NZ's oldest town. On the way, due it's popularity and the fact that is just sounded so godamn tasty, we stopped in Havelock for some of NZ's famous Green Lipped Mussels. Moules Marinere this definitely wasn't. These buggers were monsters! If you can imagine the size of a normal mussel, you got it? Well these were five times bigger than what you've got in your head right now. The pot had 15 of these in and we struggled. Although they were delicious.

Over in Nelson, the streets were packed with local producers selling they're wears at the biggest farmers Market I had ever seen. It was awesome, school children reciting Maori songs and dances including a spine chilling rendition of the Haka (don't look in their eyes!). We wandered around in a food and drink induced haze, intoxicated by wave after wave of amazing smells. Tantalising of course, but to save money we headed back to the camper for soup, truly heartbreaking! Anyway, Nelson was a cool little town with a funky local population and some awesome looking buildings, apparently NZ's oldest. on our way out of town we visited one of the many micro-breweries in the area to do a beer tasting. We were given six beers in total, the full spectrum of pale ales to heavy stouts and sat there pretending we knew exactly what we were talking about, "mmm very hoppy this one shell"....think we had a clear winner though.

From Nelson we ventured further around the coast to one of NZ's most visited tourist sites, Abel Tasman National Park. Looking more like the Thai islands than a windy south Pacific outpost the colours in this area were out of this world. Although we didn't have the time or money to do the full 60km Coastal trek (you had to pay for water taxis to take you to the start point) we managed to do a three hour trek and get a good feel of the area. The park is made up of desolate, pristine White sand beaches and beautiful little islands. Shame we picked a freezing day to see it all! So there we go, another immensely packed week on limited funds! We've had to make the executive decision to change our flight date back to the UK as we've already mentioned, were nearly out of money! Still, we figure there would be no better place to be skint than Fiji! It will only be a couple of weeks early though-nothing drastic! Anyway, love to you and happy Mayday, Tommo and shello xx