So we arrived in blenheim late one evening after a nice ferry crossing. Still travelling with Iain we were dropped at a hostel for the night and bid him a fond fairwell as he headed on down for the ski season further south. Our hostel was fine, quite modern and warm but only had 6 people in it seemingly, a german couple and lots of chinese, there was not much atmosphere and language was a fair barrier so we decided to spend the night and move on. next day we moved to the grapevine backpackers on a weekly rate into a double room. the hostel was nice and i imagine perfect for summer but in winter it was just freezing! we invested in a fan heater (best 5 pounds we ever spent!) and managed to stay just above hypothermia levels for most of our stay. on arrival we were greeted by Cedric and Rik. Cedric was Swedish and just moving out of our room into a dorm and Rik was english and had been living in Sheffield for some years since going to Uni there. The world continued to get smaller as we chatted and discovered his local was the porter cottage and his sister lived on glenalmond Road, no 66! my parents living at 65 for the last 35 years or so. the rest of the grapevine crowd were all nice, despite the lethargy we were all consumed by thanks to the vineyard work.

We got set up with some work our first day there and the next day at 6:30 we were up and preparing for our first days pruning, stripping and trimming grapevines. this was not a walk in the park......

after the first day my hands were in a lot of pain and slightly frozen in a claw like pose, jennifer was fearing for her career as a musician, i was barely able to hold cutlery, so it will not surprise you that jennifer lasted three days and me four (mainly just to return our tax forms and gardening gloves) whilst the outdoor nature of the work was appealing, it was very cold, the scenery around was beautiful and helped dim the monotony of the work, but at the end of the day it just wasn't worth the effort for 25 pounds a day. as we began to get demoralised over the amount of pay we were getting we realised it was actually a fight to get the minimum wage out of the wineries as they prefer to put you on to a contract rate where you get paid a certain amount per bush hacked up. this is about 50 cents, so if you only do 10 an hour you only earn 5 dollars instead of the minimum of 12 dollars something. we fought for our minumum wage and left there employ. however our hostel was still being fun. 1/2 the people went away for the weekend so us cedric Rik , oldham Rick and Googs (the remaining inmates) had a nice sunday roast and apple crumble whilst watching indiana jones on DVD, and then Kiss kiss bang bang (i recommend everyone watch this film, it's great) . We got a lot of films watched that week actually as it was the only (cheap) form of entertainment apart from the pool table (which though being free was in a outdoor room unheated and thus an experience similar to that of captain oates' to play once the sun had gone in. THe next monday we were enjoying our lie in expecting everyone else to have been up at 6 and gone to work. after a spot of shopping we returned to find everyone else had taken the day of as well, no one could face going in. Cedric had a cold , Rik had decided to leave blenheim, Googs didn't fancy it and Oldham rick called his employers to say his clothes weren't quite dry after washing them over the weekend, good excuses all!

We had decidede to go down to kaikora and then on to christchurch to look for warmer office work and managed to get a cleaning job in kaikora lined up for the three nights we intended to stay there. Rik decided to leave as well and a canadian girl from the hostel Nicole was also on the move so we weren't too saddened to leave the ice box of blenheim.

us and Rik hitchhiked down to Kaikoura , jennifer and me were picked up by an english girl in a camper van who was also heading south for a touch of skiing. so we got dropped right outside our new hostel for free ( much better than paying heaps for a coach ticket! )

our new hostel was nice and warm and friendly so we were relieved to defrost there for a few days, even better news was that the local pub had a quiz on that night so we took Rik under our quiz team wing and decided to help him break his duck in pub quizes. obviously we did sensationally in the quiz and having been second or third all the way through tied for the lead with two rounds to go. It was then we noticed the quiz masters mate Ned feeding the locals the answers and realised we would have to settle for second place, bloody ned... anyway second was very respectable and earnt us a 25 dollar bar tab and a T-shirt, and Rik was delighted. Obviously we reutrned the next night with Nicole who had hitched down that day to sup our winnings. we didn't get to the pub that night till about 8:30 though cos during the day we had been WHALE WATCHING!

the seas around Kaikoura are famous for their marine life and Whales were virtually guaranteed on a boat trip out, however the seas had been pretty rough the last few days and boats had not been going out on them. We kind of struck lucky in that our boat was ok to go out but with some strong winds and a 5 metre swell it wasn't going to be plain sailing. We whacked down some sea sickness tablets and set off, launching literally out of the sea as we crested a wave and the sea dropped five metres away into a trough. shortly everyone was taking advantage of the seassickness bags provided, fortunately none of our party was sick though JEnnifer was the greenest around the gills and we all felt ropey for a day or 2 afterwards. but enough of the downside the up side was that we saw four sperm whales! one of them we saw twice, we were able to pull up quite close to them and see them dive, arched back then massive tail out the water and splooosh gone, really magnificent and the photo's won't do it any justice at all....

we barely dare hope to see dolphins on the way back to shore but a heard of them raced us back along the bay jumping and spinning along beside , under and in front of us. which was an added bonus, it was a great trip but we were all glad to get back to old terra firma.

Teh next day Nicole was off again so we arranged to meet up with her in Christchurch whilst we got bikes (a perk of being a cleaner) ( what Evan hadn't mentioned until this point is that we're making up beds and cleaning bathrooms for our rent in Kaikoura - quite a popular way of travelling round if you happen to plan ahead or rock up as one of their cleaners is leaving...) and took a nice ride out to the local seal colony! more marine life, the seals were cool just lying around an area near a car park.  got some more nice photos and had a stroll along the headland which looked very similar to wales at times and then cycled bag to buy somehting for tea.

The next morning we did our final session of cleaning and left the hostel about mid-day to attempt hitching again, this time the 200 km to christchurch... (Dan Brown ending)there was a spot of rain around and three of us together might be too much for some people to fit in... would be be lucky and get a lift or would we stand soaking in the cold for hours.....