What the...?!

Mountain next to Mount Doom!
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Just imagine - you're tucked up snug and warm in bed at 1.50am on Saturday night / Sunday morning. Suddenly, there's a noise outside that can only be described as a World War Two air raid alarm.  Slowly the dorm begins to stir, then slowly come to their senses and think the world is about to end...

Well, this is what happened to us last night.  We got out of bed, wandered round the hostel, trying to find someone who knew what the heck was going on, but to no avail.  Between six of us in the dorm (two who didn't speak English), we managed to come up with the following: Tsunami warning, earthquake alarm, escaped prisoner warning, sinking ship alarm etc.  Eventually we decided that the world wasn't about to end, so went back to sleep.  This morning we discovered that the town of Kaikoura has a volunteer fire service, and this is how the firemen are raised from their slumber (along with the rest of the village). If only someone had thought to warn us...

Heading towards Picton
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So, the last couple of days have been fairly non-eventful, compared to the previous few days anyway.  We travelled from Taupo down to Wellington on Friday, a long journey with not a lot to see, apart from a couple of mountains (one of which was Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings).

We spent the night in Wellington on Friday, then travelled to Picton on Saturday, on the ferry across the Cook Straight, which has some amazing scenery.  From Picton we got the Trans Costal express to Kaikoura, which also has some fantastic views, and we saw dolphins and seals.

Sunset in Kaikoura
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Kaikoura doesn't have a huge amount going for it, but we are here to go whale watching, and swimming with dolphins. Unfortunately the whale watching this morning was cancelled, so we are booked to do it tomorrow afternoon.  We're just hoping that the dolphin swim goes ahead at 5.30am tomorrow.

The hostel we are in is really nice. Last night saw a fab sunset, then tonight we have had a barbeque (lots of fish mum, you'd have been really impressed with me) which everyone has attended. It's great just to be able to sit about and chat with loads of fellow travellers.  We did a really nice, long walk this afternoon (and saw some seals really close up), and as we came back I commented on how nice a long soak in hot bath would be, if only the hostel had one.  What I had forgotten until we got back, was that it has a fab spa, so we soaked in that for ages.

Seal in Kaikoura coloney
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This travelling malarkey is such a hard life....