Day 66: Kaikoura

Last night a fairly big cyclone hit the North East coast of the north island and so today it has slowly moved its way down the coast, which meant we couldn't go whale watching or try and swim with some dolphins which was a bit of a shame! As we were leaving Kaikoura we came across this amazing little shop on the side of the road selling crayfish so we decided to stop off. They were huge, genuinely the biggest crayfish I've ever seen and they cost quite a lot as well- so we just shared one of the smaller ones! Then about a mile down the road we saw a huge seal colony so stopped off and watched them for a little bit as they huddled together to stop the rain getting in. Then we headed up to Picton where we were going to catch the ferry across. We had a plan to hide Clem in the back of the van (so we didn't have to pay for another person as it cost another $50), and at first it seemed to go well as she was hidden underneath all our bags and duvets (getting extremely overheated), but then as we checked in they gave us two types of boarding passes and I assumed one was for the van and one for me, meaning Clem didn't have one. We then began to think how to get around this and concluded that she would have to just stay in the van for the entire crossing, not ideal. As we were about to board the boat, the guy took both the boarding passes off me so we managed to sneak Clem on and they never found out, we felt like such bad ass tourists.

Clem hidden under all our stuff, who would ever know!