Waves, hot chocolate and thermal pools.

We woke up to heavy cloud and misting rain, so whale watching was out. It gave us the chance to take a bit more of a look around Kaikoura. We spent some time on the beach across from our apartment, and remarked on how large the grains of sand were...

Jen and Josh (doing his impression of a baby fur seal).

Lily (who had a rock in her shoe...for some reason), and Hamish. Picture some gigantic mountains behind those clouds.

The kids - struggling valiantly to build a 'pebble castle'.

The road out to Hanmer Springs reinforced both our views of New Zealand's natural beauty and its complete disregard for road safety. Lack of cliff-side barriers notwithstanding, the trip through the mountains was very pleasant indeed. In the middle of the misty Kaikoura Ranges, we came across a completely isolated coffee house (complete with roaring fire) where we grabbed a spot of morning tea. They offered hot chocolate, which the kiddies found irresistable - Hamish attempting to force his face down into the mug. This resulted in an incomplete chocolate ring being left on his face - producing a faux grin as well as a chocolate mono-brow (classy).


We reached Hanmer Springs in the early afternoon, and settled in to our 'rustic' (ie dated) Alpine Chalet, before visiting the Thermal Pools. We took a dip with a few bus-loads of other strange individuals, who were enjoying sitting in hot water while being rained on in temperatures floating around 9 degrees Celsius. The view from our place was very nice indeed, but am thinking the heating system may struggle with the predicted overnight temperature expected to fall to -1.