Hi! Yes, we’ve been enjoying ourselves. Please forgive any typos – I’m very tired and this keyboard is sensitive!<\/p>\n
Right, we left Nelson and drove to Kaikoura which is a wonderful place. Really wonderful. We’ve had the best meal of our trip – if you are ever in Kaikoura go to Finz in South Bay. Yum. The service was excellent, the food was even better, and the whole experience worth every penny.<\/p>\n
Kaikoura is nice little place. The dive we did was good, but not what we were expecting. We were expecting seals. Lots of seals which we did see on the rocks. It wasn’t until we got out of the water that they said ‘oh if you want seals you want to snorkle, not dive. You don’t get the seals on the dives.’ Well, gee. If we’d known that before we got in the water we would have snorkled instead! By the time we got out I was far too cold to do any snorkling. But we did have a very nice dive – very like UK diving really with lots of life and kelp.<\/p>\n
The next morning we got up early and went out on a whale watching tour. Run very differently from any others we’ve done. It was a large boat and we all sat inside while they raced off to where they thought the whales would be. The crew spotted and we sat inside watching informative slide shows or the map showing where we were, the compass heading, and the depth. We were only allowed to get up and go on deck when the boat had stopped. Interesting. But we saw three sperm whales (and I even got footage of them diving), dusky dolphins playing around the boat, and a seal colony. We also saw wandering albatross! Really nice trip.<\/p>\n
We got off the boat and headed out for Hanmer Springs. We only spent the one night there so got there, got checked into our chalet (a whole one bed place to ourselves!), and then headed for the thermal pools where we had a soak for about 2 hours. Then up and off the next day for Franz Josef.<\/p>\n
We took a slow drive through Lewis Pass and down the west coast. Stopped to see things and just generally ambled down. Just before Panakaiki (the pancake rocks and blowholes) we saw Joe’s penguin sign – a little penguin in a yellow diamond. Yes we have photos. And photos of Joe standing in front of it. We drove very slowly the whole 10Km but didn’t see any penguins.<\/p>\n
Panakaiki was interesting and we were watching Hector dolphins off the coast more than the rocks. Well, the rocks don’t move much. Also saw loads of birds. Then we went to Hokitika where they have loads of greenstone shops. Had a quick look and ended up in the supermarket getting lunch for the following day (today).<\/p>\n
Got to our place to stay and found we are in a tiny little room – from our own nice chalet to a tiny room barely big enough for a double bed! Oh well, the bar had happy hour.<\/p>\n
Then we were up far too early this morning after last night and off for a full day glacier walk. This was hard work! But fun. Climbing the face of the glacier was difficult – the steps were huge. But it doesn’ t half cure a hangover.<\/p>\n
Right, this place is closing and the poor bloke wants to go home. So more update later and hopefully some flickr photos uploaded!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hi! Yes, we’ve been enjoying ourselves. Please forgive any typos – I’m very tired and this keyboard is sensitive! Right, we left Nelson and drove to Kaikoura which is a wonderful place. Really wonderful. We’ve had the best meal of our trip – if you are ever in Kaikoura go to Finz in South Bay. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":55,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2005\/12\/26\/happy-christmas\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":0},"title":"Happy Christmas!","date":"Monday, 26 December 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Hope everyone has had a marvy Christmas and are all looking forward to the new year. We had a wonderful time in Fiordland. Got to Te Anau in good time and enjoyed walking around the small town. Did all our shopping for Christmas the first day and got food for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":338,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/04\/whale-watching\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":1},"title":"Whale watching","date":"Monday, 4 January 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Just back from the best meal we've had all trip - ate at the Indigo Grill, which appears to be part of a series of places.\u00a0 But the place acts like a small independent and the service and food were excellent. We left almost too full to walk! Definitely recommended\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":59,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/06\/we-survived\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":2},"title":"We survived!","date":"Friday, 6 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"And are back from the Southern Ocean today. What a trip. Joe did well, but claimed it was awful. If I looked at him he'd stop smiling. So I let him get on with enjoying the trip. We had rotten weather. After two days rolling around the sea we anchored\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":283,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/19\/dolphins\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":3},"title":"Dolphins!","date":"Friday, 19 June 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, for the last day I had booked a boat trip out to see the wildlife and Mull. I booked with Mara Mhor for a one day trip (Wildlife Safari) out to Mull and around the coast. So we we were up and out early to catch the boat for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":60,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/07\/christchurch\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":4},"title":"Christchurch","date":"Saturday, 7 January 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Got a flight from Invercargill to Christchurch this morning and was met at the Christchurch airport by a couple we had met on the boat. Very nice to be met! Headed for the Antarctic Centre which was very interesting, then off to see white flipper penguins (little blues). That was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4183,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/26\/the-professionals\/","url_meta":{"origin":53,"position":5},"title":"The Professionals","date":"Thursday, 26 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"For Boxing Day and the 27th Kathleen booked a land tour and boat tour. So Boxing Day was our trip around the island with a professional guide. (K: with Kangaroo Island Wilderness Tours.) We were picked up from the hotel after breakfast; while we waited for collection we watched the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}