After a 9 hour bus drive (the longest so far by far) up to Christchurch we got out into our hostel Base Christchurch which was probably the worst hostel I'd been in so far. The Base hostels through NZ are usually pretty good, but this was an absolute maze, really confusing to find anywhere, and it was FREEZING! Thank goodness we were only staying one night.

The next morning we got back onto the bus and headed up the east coast to a small township called Kaikoura. It is a beautiful spot with really nice views up north and down south, on the beautiful Kaikoura mountain range. I could have done whale watching or dolphin swimming here, but since I've already seen them quite a few times on my trips to visit family in California I decided to give it a miss. So instead I just went for a walk up the coast a bit with Jess and Neil and just chilled out for a bit. We made a delicious meal together and got to know some of the others in the hostel a bit which was really cool. I was going to get up in the middle of the night to watch England play Germany at 2am, but my I slept through my alarm. Finding out the score in the morning I was actually quite glad that I slept through it!!! It would have just put me in a really bad mood I think!

So that's Kaikoura, not too interesting really! We got up to leave at 9am and went past a pool which was full of seal pups, they were SO cute! I really wanted to take one home with me! Hehe they were really curious and came about a metre away from us trying to sniff our clothes and things. Good job their parents weren't with them, I don't fancy getting attacked by an adult seal!!

Anyway, off I go to Wellington!

Joelle xxxxxxxxxx