Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th January Christchurch to Auckland via Picton/Wellington

We left the motel early this morning for an express trip to Picton where we pick up the ferry for the 3 hour crossing back to Wellington.On route, Wozza picked up 3 of his next group of passengers for the South Island tour.We stopped at Kaikoura once again for a drink and to stretch our legs and I returned to the 2nd hand book shop I had discovered on my previous trip to trade in a book I had finished.

The ferry crossing was rough but uneventful and we were met the other end by Scratch (nobody seems to go by their real name here!!!).

On arrival at our accommodation at approximately 6:00 pm we were told there were no rooms available for us (there were 6 of us and there should have been 1 double room for me and Ant, and a quad share for the others).

Apparently either the driver or the girls on reception had given ALL the keys out to the group of 19 people travelling with Adventure Tours NZ who had arrived earlier in the day.I then spent an hour and a half trying to get the receptionist to sort it out.She constantly left us standing there whilst she gave out meal vouchers and sold Internet time to other customers, despite telling us she "just needed 5 minutes to sort it out".Her solution was to run round the hostel trying to find out what beds were free.She eventually worked out which rooms had spare beds in (allegedly!) and proceeded to give out keys to my fellow travellers; 1 young lad was given the key to a room that had been booked as a private double by another couple, and 1 young lad was turfed out of his bed at 9:30 pm as it was already occupied!!!!Ant and I had identified someone who was prepared to move into a quad share to give us the private room we had asked for but I had to ask 3 times for the key.The receptionist insisted she couldn't give it to me while his gear was still in there, even though she had randomly given out keys to the others in our group for other rooms that were occupied!!!

We eventually got it sorted out and once we had moved our stuff into the room, we retired to the bar for 2 very stiff vodkas!!!!

Sunday morning (Ant's birthday unfortunately) was a very early start (6.30) as we had to drop most of the other group off at the very terminal as they were joining Wozza's South Island tour.The rest of the day was spent driving back to Auckland a distance of approximately 400 miles and 8 hours.

Back in Auckland, Ant and I met up with Sophie and Maria to celebrate Ant's birthday and to say a final farewell.We have 1 day in Auckland before we leave New Zealand and head for our new adventure in Australia.

We've had some highs and some lows on this trip, but the most definite high has got to be the people we met who have become such good friends - Hope to some of you again in the not too distant future.