Our flight from Sydney to Christchurch only took 3 hours, but we had to be up at 4:30 in the morning to check-in in time. Amy made sure we had everything packed up, whilst I went to the McDonalds next door to get some bacon and egg sarnies and some coffee. It's a good job the place was open 24 hours!

The flight was easy as it was so short, and the time difference meant we landed at about midday, but we were held up in the notoriously tetchy immigration line. We had to declare our tent and walking boots, and as my boots weren't deemed clean enough I was carted off into a room to clean them whilst they emptied the tent of foreign soil samples.

Once all that was over we got a bus to town. We decided against taking a taxi to our hostel, but the 20 minute walk was quite tiring with all our luggage.

The guy in charge of the hostel was really nice and helpful, and he even upgraded us from a dorm to a double room because it was empty. The rooms were pretty basic, but there were loads of free amenities like laundry, kitchen, TV room and books swaps. That's the kind of hostel we like, not the ones in Australia that don't do anything for you.

There isn't much else to write about for the rest of the day, and the entire day after that, as we spent pretty much all our time trying to catch up on our blogs and photo albums. With the internet being so expensive in Australia, we had managed to end up 6 weeks behind before we knew it. After about 7 hours bloging each we did manage to catch up.

On our second full day in town, we decided it was about time we actually went to do something touristy. We took the 15 minute walk into the centre of town and had a look around Cathedral Square. There was some sort of winter festival on so we watched a guy juggle fire on a unicycle, before heading into the Cathedral itself. It was nice enough inside - nothing special compared to some we had seen in Europe - but you could climb the tower for a couple of quid each, so we decided to take a look. There were some nice views of the square, and the mountains in the distance, but we had seen enough after 10 minutes and climbed back down.

Another feature of the winter festival was the temporary ice rink, so we decided to give it a go, despite the fact I hadn't skated in about a decade. The rink was only small, but it was quiet enough for us to make a few unsteady laps. We managed to spend the entire hour without falling over, and were even going backwards (looking rather ungainly) by the end.

We spent the rest of the day shopping for tea and cathing up on more blogging, before giving the rents a call on skype. In the evening I watched TV and played DS whilst Amy speed-read through an old Harry Potter from the book swap.

We had a big lie in the next day and only got up and about after midday. Our plan for the day was a round of minigolf, as we had seen a flyer in the hostel. It didn't look too far on the map, so we set off walking, but it took us an hour and a half to get there. The golf itself was good fun though, with loads of themed holes that were actually quite tough. Amy managed to get a hole in one, which we even managed to record (See the videos section of this blog), but I still beat her by a good 10 shots!

There was no chance we were walking back, so we got the bus to town, did our now customary hour catching up on the internet, then walked home. We couldn't be bothered to cook in the evening, but we had seen a good deal at Domino's Pizza, so we had one each whilst watching TV.

On our last day in Christchurch we decided to go to The Adrenaline Forest, which was a giant set off assault courses set high up in the trees. I'd called them a couple of days ago to enquire about times etc. and they said to just turn up. The owner of the hostel was kind enough to give us a lift to the bus stop, which was 10 minutes drive away, then we got the bus out to the park.

When we got to the Adrenaline Park we realised there was a sign in the window saying 'Back on Friday', which was 4 days away. We took a look around the empty park which, much to our dismay, looked awesome, then went across the road to an information centre. They said that the place never shuts without warning, so something urgent must have happened.

We were left with an hour before the next bus, so we took a walk along to the nearby beach, then spent the last 20 minutes playing on a kids assault course to quench our thirst for adrenaline. It didn't really work.

We went home dissappointed, then spent the evening in a huff. At least we had a curry to cheer us up. After watching TV for a bit, we went to bed early knowing we had an early start to catch the bus to Oamaru.