Position 42 23.737S  173 40.785E

Not a great photo but the lupins are out in bloom at the moment, They are covering the fallow land.  All a really pretty yellow.  Apparently, Radio 4, they are being grown in the UK now as a potential replacement for soya bean to feed animal stock.  If grown correctly it’s got 18% protein which same as soya bean.   We are not sure if it was a British flower and grown as a crop originally or not.

Lots of fur seals on our way to Kaikoura. These guys were seriously smelly. 

You can see the ears and a few teeth here.

The males are starting to establish their territories and collect harems for breeding.  These two males were having a bit of a set to.  The one on the right attacked the one on the left.  The left one had been crying so it was a half-hearted attempt at ousting the bigger male.  The crying really was crying.

A cute wave good bye

You can do a short walk (10 mins) up a stream to a small waterfall at Ohau.  Young seals come here to play.  In bad weather you can get hundreds of them.  There were a couple here when we went.  This pup did not even open its eyes.

The waterfall.

A 180 view with Paul on the right, I’ve just discovered that button on the camera.

This pup was messing around in the water and eventually emerged and started to itch.  Learnt something when it did this.  It’s claws protruded out of flippers, above the flipper tips, bit like Wolverines claws.  You can see in the LH photo the ends of the flipper are curled back and the claws emerged at the bend.  Fascinating.

Bit further down the road were these nesting spotted shags with some big chicks.  Bit of mouth to mouth going on!

Finally reached Kaikoura.  Billed as the whale watching capital of NZ so we had to come here. What a dump.  One can only assume its ambiance improves with the season.  People rave about this place.  Que?