Back in Sydney -again! The plan was to spend three or maybe four days at a push here, but by the time I arrived at the airport and used my one $50 note to get a cab - unjustified luxury - I had already decided I needed longer, as I was going on boot camp. I had reached the stage of being disgustingly unfit, the weigh in at the skydive mearly emphasizing this and I needed to sort it out! So I decided to stay a week, which luckily Peter and Kathryn were ok with! ...

The next part of the trip was a sad one, as it involved heading back to Christchurch to drop Arwa off at the airport. We'd had so much fun it was going to be horrible saying goodbye! We had planned the trip so we could drive back via Arthur's pass, which is supposed to be really beautiful - because we obviously hadn't done enough driving through beautiful scenery! We started off up the coast still and took a little detour to Greymouth in search of a CD shop to bu...

Ok. So I realise I've got about three weeks behind with the old blog, but there is kind of a very good reason - i.e. I wanted the package I sent home to get there and be opened and my skydive DVD be watched before I told anyone I'd done it! I had booked to do a skydive in Wanaka on 3rd January. I hadn't originally wanted to do anything as stupid as that when I started my trip, but given that nearly everyone I've met has done one and loved it, I decided to have...

So after Christchurch, the next section focussed on birds! We headed to Oamaru in search of two types of penguin - yellow-eyed and blue. We were briefly worried that we would not be able to find the yellow-eyed in time as we were only arriving in the town at the right time for them to come in from the sea and we still needed to find them, but we needn't have worried, no sooner had we entered into Oamaru there were road signs everywhere pointing us to penguins! ...

The trip down to Wellington had been through pretty good weather so we were really disappointed in the morning to barely be able to see across the road because of the cloud and rain! Our crossing on "one of the most beautiful ferry rides in the world" turned out to be an uncomfortable, crammed Christmas Eve ferry sitting on the floor trying to get views - but failing! We had allowed a lot of time that we thought we didn't need to get to the bus stop but...