After a long journey back to Rotorua on Saturday, i ended up going on the luge again, for the third time. This was because a girl i met on my bus was a bit obsessed by it and wanted to go on it again for her third time too. I decided that it would be more fun than sitting around at a hostel that I've already statyed in before, waiting for the next day to come, so I went with her.Sunday morning saw the start of my East Escape tour. It was a much smaller bus (van r...

On leaving Kaikoura, the first stop of the day was at a cafe in Kekerengu. It wasn't much to write home about but the reason I mention it is that it was right on the coast and while we were sitting there, dolphins turned up about 50m out to sea. So that made the annoying half an hour 'tea break' a lot more interesting. Thursday was a lovely day again, which I was glad of because it mean that I actully got to see a bit of Marlborough Sounds as i went across on th...

Kaikoura is a lovely little seaside town, although I didn't notice this the day I arrived because it was raining all day. I have had a friend again while I've been here, because I've joined back up with Nanna. So the two of us spent the afternoon playing cards to keep ourselves amused. Weirdly the weather here seems to alternate at the moment, so a crap day will be followed by a really nice one. This was useful here because I had booked to go whale watching on Tu...

The day i left Oamaru was pretty un-eventful. We drove back inland to a place called Lake Tekapo. On the way there we stopped at a few places along a river to take pics of Hydro-electric power stations and dams (!) but apart from that we headed straight for the lake. Lake tekapo isn't a very big town, so i was glad that I was only staying there over night. The first of the town's two highlights is a small church on the edge of the Lake, which is called the Church...

After having a cold for the last two or three days i wanted to spend my first day in Dunedin doing nothing, but when the weather was so nice on Tuesday morning I decided I had to make the most of the day. So i went for a walk around the town to have a look at some of the old buildings, including the Railway station which is allegedly the most photographed building in NZ (although I was told that about a building in Rotorua too!) and the Cadbury's chocolate factor...