Tuesday 24th February- It’s time to leave here.

Damn and blast, it’s raining cats and dogs. So we decided on a slow morning and packed up the inside contents of the tent into the car and then went to the kitchen for a large bacon sandwich and a hot cup of tea.

Just when we though the rain had stopped, we leapt out and started to dismantle the tent only it then started raining hard again resulting in us putting a very wet outer into a plastic bag which is not good.

It continued to rain just about all the way to Kaikoura where we arrived at about five pm which is a good time. The Studio apartment is out of town in a new complex and the boss was very good as when telling him about our wet tent he said we could dry it in his garage.

Being a Studio with limited equipment we had decided to eat out tonight and he recommended a seafood restaurant called 42 Degrees 25 minutes South.

The restaurant is owned by an English couple who arrived from Kent about five years ago but are now planning to return to the UK as the pub that they own somewhere in Kent is struggling and they want to try and save their investment.

The food was really excellent, we both had the local prawns flamed and then on a salad with chilli sauce followed by a goodly portion of monk fish served on a mashed potato with a mild curry sauce and it was damn good. The bottle of Oyster Bay Chardonnay did also help and we were both impressed.

After dinner we drove down to the seal colony that lives south of the town and watched them but it was getting a bit too dark for photos and so we will return tomorrow morning.

Let’s hope it’s a better day tomorrow for our whale watching experience.