South Island Ending

 This was our last full day on the South Island of New Zealand.

It was a lovely late winter/early spring day as we left Christchurch 

The first part of our drive was pretty much through farming area. Though I did not get any pictures, there were tons of baby sheep around

Most of the cattle are for dairy cows our guide said.

Then we entered wine country

We stopped for tea at cheviot

The museum was right across the street

Not far down the road I spied this old church

Today me travel buddy was Sas, the new little lamb we picked up here in New Zealand

We drove through the countryside on our way to the Pacific Ocean and the northern parts of the South Island 

We came out of the mountains to breaking waves and blue seas

Also most of the coastline was very rugged

Dale and I were dropped off at the airfield near the town of Kaikoura

We were going to fly out over the ocean with three other people and a pilot to see if we could find a whale

We got all seated and geared up

And took off into the wild blue yonder

Shortly after we took off a weather front came through

Sas helped watch for sea creatures. Our pilot was pretty awesome as he was able to keep the ride pretty smooth even with changing weather

We had clouds, rain, a circular rainbow, and sunshine on the flight

There was an earthquake in this area about 6 years ago that cause part of the land just under the water on the coast to raise about 6 meters. It changed this areas of the coastline

The town you can see by the shore of the upper set of water is the town the rest of the tour was having lunch at

From the air we could see the color changes of the water. It went from shallow to quite deep as not that far from the coast is a deep trench that goes down as high as the mountains in the background. Over a mile deep!

We had some chop on the water, which made spotting anything hard. I think I might have seem a back of a sperm whale going down, but who knows

We did see a couple of dolphins swimming and a great view of the ocean and land of this area from an angle we rarely see it.

Coming back in to our landing area we got a great view of one of the braided rivers that run through this country.

No whales were seem for sure, but as we were being driven to where we were to meet the rest of our group, I got to make a new friend. His name is Koby and he was such a sweet doggie, I almost wish I could have brought him home.

As we joined the bus and drove on down the road we left the city of Kaikoura

This is the salt fields that produces most of the salt used in New Zealand

Vineyard were the main farming going on for the rest of todays drive

There were some rolling hill that had grazing animals

But grapes and wineries were most of the scenery

We drove through the town of Marlborough. Which is one of the well know wine producing areas

As we drive, we came upon some areas that were flooded

It seems this is the wettest winter New Zealand has had and as a result there has been some problems with flooding especially on this coast 
 

We arrived in the small town of Picton, which is where our hotel for the night is, early enough that we were able to take a bit of a walk around

They have a very lovely harbor 

And some of the residents were out for a stroll

This area was closed, but I think it a place for families to go, it looked like it had play areas, pinball machines and such

I took this picture as every where we have gone on this island, I have heard about Captain Cook. He was the European  who mapped many of the  islands in the pacific.

Tomorrow we board the ferry for the north island.