In the morning we showered, had breakfast and then dragged our bags down to the bus stop to catch the bus to Kaikoura. The journey was only 2 and half ours and on route we got to see a seal colony! In Kaikoura we had to locate the hostel...the bus driver gave us directions however these turned out to be slightly inaccurate and after a few google map searches we eventually found albatross backpackers! Quite a nice hostel with a great common area and nice log fi...

On our last day in Nelson we had to be up early for the bus to Picton and knew we had to get our bags either down a ridiculously long and windy hill or down a flight of step concrete steps so thought it best to give ourselves some time to do this. We enjoyed the free breakfast once more and even stole a roll to have either at lunch or with dinner that evening. The bus journey was around 3 hours and we got into Picton too early to check in. We dumped our bags at...

A girl had decided to stay longer meaning there wasn't enough room in the dorm so they upgraded us to a double private room - fine by me! The hostel is very old fashioned tho and the decor/furniture is in definite need of an upgrade. The private rooms are located in a separate building which is so quiet and reminds me of the tower of terror at Disney! There's a piano which we could just see playing by itself in the middle of the night! In the morning we had the ...

The next morning we prepared to leave and luckily for us the weather looked like it was about to turn horrible again so best to get out before we became trapped again. The bus left on time in the morning and our first stop was Bushman Petes Cafe. Not my favourite place to stop as he also known as Possum Pete as he kills possums. The evidence was spread around the cafe with fur on all the seats and dead possums and other animals mounted on the walls. There was al...

Today we had a well deserved lie in after yesterday's exertions up the glacier. After lunch we then wandered down to the spa pools as this came free as part of our glacier hike. The spa pools consisted of three pools of glacier water heated to different temperatures between 36 - 40 degrees. We didn't know they were different and stupidly ended up in the hottest one first meaning the remaining two just felt cold. The 40 degree pool was lovely on a cold day howeve...