We woke up this morning and looked out onto the beautiful view of the sea, mountains, boats and the sunshine. We made some breakfast and packed the bed away, we started looking at the maps as we still haven't really got an itinerary for this trip. There's so much we want to see and places we want to visit. We decided that we're definitely going to head south, there's Mount Cook we could visit or carry on down the coastal road. But a good stop for tonight would be Timaru where we can plan some more and from there we can still take either route. We decided to have a walk around Akaroa before leaving. The harbour was lovely and it had nice little shops all the way along. Today was a little chilly but the sun was well and truly out and warm. We walked around for an hour or so then stopped for lunch. We got some fish and chips to share, apparently New Zealand's fish and chips are supposed to be really good. We got blue cod and chips, the fish was not as nice as ours back at home but the batter was so much nicer. Also it really wasn't greasy at all, the chips were a little like oven chips though not as nice as chips from a chippy. I think we'll have time to sample more fish and chips to compare but for now Brid has the best fish and chips. After lunch we walked back to the van and got ready to set off. We wanted to drive back on the tourist route which is a scenic drive through the hills. We set off, the van didn't seem to like the hills straight away so it was difficult driving for James but it got warmed up and we got to see the most beautiful views. Akaroa is in a crater that was made from a volcano eruption thousands of years ago so the area is lovely. We went really high up onto the hills, so high there was snow and ice about. After the beautiful drive we joined the road back to Christchurch. It took quite a while to drive to Timaru, we got there around 6.00pm and found a place to park up for the night. We made some tea and got the maps out. We did a little planning before giving up because it was getting cold and making the bed up and getting some sleep.