With the taste of Fergburgers still fresh in our mouths and 3hrs sleep later, we departed for Dunedin...as you can imagine, not much was made of the day apart from catching up with sleep...

The following day we headed to Lake takepo...on the way we stopped off at a few sights, including Baldwin Street, with its amazing gradient, which made it the steepest street in the world...a shocker to climb. Then we made our way down to the Moreaki Boulders, which were a series of stones that were weathered over time to produced its spherical shape...spellbinding stuff! We then passed Lake Pukaki, where we took some amazing photo's of Mount Cook. Kerry had been reading up on Mount Cook beforehand in her lonely planet and wanted to see if we could climb it on one of the days we had free...we thought it was a good idea, until we found out from one guy, who had 7yrs hiking experience, that he was turned down cos it was too trecherous and that it takes 16days to climb to the top...haha. Apparently its even claimed a few lives too...we were planning to do it in a day lol

We then headed to the serene little town of Lake Takepo around mid-afternoonish. Suzie had her heart set on Horse riding...and seeing as i've never been before thought it would be a good idea to join her. Its something that I would never consider doing back home, but it was such a cool experience. I had a horse called Score (also know as Bad Score...he was previously a racehorse...but failed to qualify in any of the races he took part in...excellent). He was a little legend...he pretty much knew where he was going and took me along for the ride. It was such a nice day for it too as we trekked up the side of Mount John as the sun was setting. Score never really broke into anything more than a trot but that was fine by me...it was a really nice way to spend the afternoon...we ended up being out there for a good hour or so.

The following day we made our way into Christchurch where we met up with our mate Matt, and his mate Kate. Was good to see him again after our brief time in Cairns together. We ended up walking around the Botanical Gardens for awhile, while we caught up. The girls decided to head to Kaikora the following day, but Me, Ed and Matt stayed in Christchurch for one more day. We had a chilled out day and had a bit of a lads time of it, with our visit to the Cathedral Spire being the only thing of note we did...ohh apart from our time in the hot tub...slightly gay, but we didnt care lol

We then made our way down to Kaikora where Ed, Matt and I planned to do Swimming with Dolphins...we got a lift from our hostel into the Dolphin Encounter place...where we were kitted up in a wetsuit...and I was given a pair of prescription googles...so I could actually see what was going on for once...!!! We were then treated to a 15minute instructional video, which was meant to be informative, but was just hillarious...a short bus ride to the boat and then we were off insearch of Dolphins...i was actually more nervous about this that my Skydive, cos we were in open water...so i requested a float...and i actually looked like a beeched whale...lol, i didnt care tho, cos the whole experience was amazing. The first time we went out, the water was absolutely freezing and I was trying to get used to the surroundings, so I didnt really see much, and again the 2nd time...but the 3rd time we went out was just the most amazing sight ever...i was literally swimming with about 30-40 dolphins underneath me and either side of me. The fourth time we went out, i was playing with a couple of Dolphins who swam up so close to me...one looked me in the eye as I tried to encircle him...later discovered that Dolphins were rather frisky animals (one female was caught getting it on 5 times with 3 different males, in just over 2 and a half minutes...blimey), so i realised that I was interrupting those two, in the words of Will Smith...getting Jiggy with it...nice. We then boarded the boat and were treated to some hot chocolate and a close up view of a seal colony, with some really cute little baby seals.