Its quite funny: as I was writing the last lines of my previous entry I really believed I had left everyone I had met so far behind...that from then on it would be new faces all the way. I went downstairs and bumped into two old friends, who had arrived early in Christchurch! Brilliant! And met a few more familiar faces journeying back up north, to Auckland to make my way out the country. It never feels lonely on the Kiwi bus!

New Zealand has been awesome. Christchurch was really quaint, and very 'English'. I arrived in Kaikoura next for one night on the chance that I could fulfill my childhood dream of swimming with dolphins, and was sooo lucky. It was the perfect day for it weather-wise, they located the wild dolphins, the dolphins didn't mind us being there, and unlike the day before, the humpback whale swimming close by didn't hang around too close to call off the swim. I also managed to get one in the limited ten spaces available for fifty of us on the bus. Wow.

It was amazing. There were about 200 wild Dusky dolphins swimming off the beautiful coast of Kaikoura that day, and we were just free to swim amongst them and play with them! This breed are particularly lively, and constantly jump in the air and play in the water. If you keep them entertained they will play with you, so I spent a good half hour making silly noises and then holding out my arm to keep their attention and swim in circles with them. One of them stayed with me for ages, I swear it was looking me in the eye! Awesome. Because they're wild, we weren't allowed to touch them which is fair enough. But sometimes, when you swam amongst lots of them, they all came towards you, and under you, and I could feel ripples of water that they made bouncing off me, and the occassional brush of a fin. I can't describe how magical it was, just having so many dolphins everywear. We were wearing wetsuits and snorkels, so looking down in the clear blue water most of the time, and it was just a world of dolphins and me. Something I can't ever forget.

Making my way up the North Island I made an extra days stop in Wellington to finally do a Lord of the Rings Tour! Before I arrived in the country everyone said not to bother - hardly any of the set remains, but travelling through I've had so many recommendations. So I thought OK, since I'm here! It was pretty fun, just chatting to movie fans and taking a drive out of the city. Our guide Ted played the scenes on a laptop at the exact locations that they were filmed so we could really see what was done there. So we stood and recreated the scene in the exact place that Gandalf and Saruman walked at the Tower of Orthanc, and took our photos dressed as elves where Orlando Bloom did his Legolas photo shoot in the Rivendell location... Although the sets weren't in these locations, seeing the scenery was still pretty stunning and it was kind of cool to see the before-and-after, and know that filming had gone on there. Very impressive job. After a picnic lunch and a few more locations, I got dropped in town and made my way up the Cable Car and down again through the botanical gardens.

Since then I've just been travelling back up through old places I've visited before, really. Seems like a lifetime ago sometimes...

And now it's onto the new: flying to Fiji tomorrow, where hopefully lots of sunshine awaits! Yay!