SOUTH ISLAND - THE TOP BIT

We stayed in Christchurch with Uncle Alun for a couple of weeks and spent our time riding on miniature steam trains, hugging trees at the Botanic Gardens, cheering-on the local rugby team from the sidelines, taking picnics for days out in the mountains, eating ice-cream on days out along the coast, playing golf and painting the garden fence. When the time came to leave Christchurch for the last time and head North, we kidnapped Alun and took him with us to Kaikoura for a few days.

Many kiwi families have a 'bach' to which they escape at the weekend. Short for 'bachelor', these started out many years ago as simple weekend accommodation units, like an old railway carriage or a shed for typically male activities like hunting, shooting & fishing but today baches can be huge luxurious places on lakefronts and beaches and cost a kings ransom. Alun, Marc and I headed up the East coast to Kaikoura to stay at a friend's bach and what an amazing place it was. It didn't look very big from the outside, but it slept 10 comfortably and the view from the top studio bedroom across the bay towards the mountains was stunning. What made the place even more special was that this family home had remained largely untouched for generations - we sat on stylish iconic furniture from the 70's and enjoyed browsing through and playing some of the most fabulous vinyl collection whilst we wined and dined on crisp local Riesling and fresh lobster.

Kaikoura is whale-watching country. The Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates meet under the ocean just 2 miles offshore and the seabed drops off a shelf down into a 1 mile deep canyon which makes perfect nearshore deepwater feeding grounds for sperm whales. We signed up for a whale-watching trip out to the bay and although it was a beautiful morning and the sea was like a millpond, a screen showed that the whale-spotting boat, about five miles out was reporting swells of about 5 feet. Even though I'd never suffered motion-sickness on a boat before, I decided to join the queue for a tablet just incase.

The setting was perfect - a bright blue sea with a backdrop of rugged, snowcapped mountains as we left the harbour. At this time of year, it was likely that any whales we saw would be males, as the females would have left for the warmer waters around Tonga and Samoa. Very soon, we got a message from the spotting boat that there was a whale on the surface - they stay on the top for about 10 minutes every hour before diving for the other 50. Off we went, full throttle, and arrived just in time to see the ripples he'd left after his dive. Then another message - a sonar hydrophone dropped into the water about 5 miles out had picked up the clicking sound that whales make as they feed. We stopped near to the signal and there were gasps of awe as Little Nick surfaced in the silver shimmer of the sun on the water with a huge blast from his blowhole. We followed him for a few minutes before we got to see that iconic image of a diving whale's tail against the horizon as he slipped under the water. We went back in search of the first whale and the hydrophone told us that we'd got lucky for the second time - he surfaced very near to us and again we followed at the required distance of 30 metres before he gave us "the tail" and disappeared.

We had been out for a couple of hours so it was time to head for home and to try our luck with spotting some Dusky Dolphins on the way. We couldn't believe it when a pod of at least 150 surrounded the boat, darting around us and doing acrobatics. It was a truly delightful sight. Closer ashore, fur seals lay floating on their backs in the water, waving their flippers in the air and the albatrosses that flew behind us completed the most amazing experience.

I was as sick as a dog ...