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Started early with a 12.01 showing of LOTR TTT. The cinema was packed -- I was surprised we got tickets and surprised Greymouth had this much interest. Interest being a moot point. I'd say half the audience were there to see Peter Jackson's worthy interpretation of The Second Book, young and old alike. The other half of the audience were schoolkids using the film as an excuse to be up late. Plenty of chatter and calling at each other for the first few minutes. Mind you, there was a bit of chit-chat from the crumblies though I suspect it was more replaying the dialog for the hard of hearing. Outside, afterwards at 3am there were still a few kids impressing no-one with their boom boxes and holes-in-exhausts.

We staggered back into life around 9 and we're making our move around ten but only as far as Phil's Hot Bread Shop for breakfast.

Our first nature feature was the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. Naturally, they don't know how the phenomenon works [pancaking] but have faith in stylobedding where the usual compression into limestone is overdone and [the rock] liquifies before becoming mudstone. The mudstone erodes a little quicker giving the rock a layer of pancakes effect. Quite why the mudstone should be so regular (50 or so evenly spaced layers) isn't explained which makes me suspicious. I like a solid theory, not a runny one. We saw no evidence of blowholes, it would appear you need a bit of a storm as well as a high tide.

On, then, to the Cape Foulwind seal colony. This is quite accessible for the average tourist (unlike Cape Palliser which is way off the beaten track) and as such the average muppet is kept well away from the seals. Which was a shame for the more conscienscious tourist as it was a much bigger colony with at least a dozen pups stumbling about far below us. We were lucky with Cape Palliser too as it turns out they [the seals] have only just re-colonised the North Island after the seal fur trade was stopped.

I was quite tired now so dutifully handed over the driving to Helen and promptly fell asleep. Having come over to the West Coast through the Buller [river] valley (for want of a better name, SH6 technically) we were heading back to Kaikoura through the Lewis Pass (SH7). Once again, few places to stop with an irritating habit of advertising something as 400m to go, letting you traverse three hairpins so you lose track of everything then not signposting the thing itself so you shoot straight past. [We have since discovered that some things are only signposted in one direction.]

We stopped at one feature completely by accident as the turnoff was easily visible, for once, but marked only as a picnic spot. It turned out to be the track to Lake Danielle with the Sluice Box, a severe narrowing of the wide mountain river. As ever, the river was quite low -- mostly rocks with a small stream meandering through -- and so the Sluice Box was not spectacular. I suspect that a lot of NZ could do with being re-visited during the melt when things get a bit more interesting.

Most of the rest of the trip passed me by except to note that it's very hard to play sport the mountain. Our atlas only notes the highest peaks. When you look around it's hard to say whether you're looking at a peak 10 or 50 km away.

Rolling into Kaikoura revealed plenty of misty mountains, a nice layer of cloud at, say, 1000m, with mountain range standing above and below. Kaikoura isn't a bit place, it does have two 4squares, though.

The guesthouse is quite nice though for some reason the communal bathroom strikes me as odd. Other places tend to have the bathroom with individual toilets and showers in the same area [I'm not describing this well!] whereas here they feel different, if only because that area has a door to it.

We check out the two or three restaurants and plump for the one that didn't advertise its prices but did claim to do Chicken Teriyaki which Helen wanted. Inside, we're told that the that the board is a bit old and they don't do it anymore. And the prices are quite steep. Helen plumps for the spaghetti marinere meatballs (speghetti cold and meatballs taste a bit odd) and I went for the nachos (cheap and, as it happened, very nice). An early night, to bed at 10ish.

Dolphin Lodge, Kaikoura S42.40392 E173.68260 Elev. 5m.