Today was pretty uneventful as all we really did was a mammoth 11 and a half hour bus back to Auckland! It was awful. Thank god it's our last Stray bus trip! But guess who we met tonight...Craig and Paolo!! They decided to postpone their trip north until tomorrow, so we went for a dew drinks with them and some friends Craig met from home, down at a place called O'Hagen's on the Viaduct. Nice down there with lots of bars, but it's really expensive. We left there...

Got myself a hair cut today. It's time to start growing back a normal hairstyle. Very short hair is great for travelling, but I prefer to have a bit of a hairstyle. I went to the place where Damian worked called Get Funkd to see how much it would cost. I promptly said Get Funkd to them too - $62 (£31) for a men's haircut! So I went around the corner to where Craig got his haircut and it cost me $15 (£7.50). I look a complete donut, but it was cheap as chips. G...

Another reunion! We met Craig...Mel...and Paolo at Midnight Espresso, which the family have been talking about the whole way around South Island. We're all back together again for a day. We keep saying by to each other, then meet up a few days later. The weather was miserable today, the same as when we came to Wellington about 4 weeks ago! So me and Therese decided to go the free museum called Te Papa. The rest of the family have already been when they were here...

We stopped off at another Seal Colony on the drive up to Picton ferry port. There were easily over a hundred seals, by far the most we've seen at any of the stops we've done. And on the drive up the coastline, we could see loads in the sea and sat on the rocks. That was another nice drive along the coastline. Me, Therese and Craig decided to do a hike today rather than go straight to Wellington with the tour bus. So we dropped our bags at the ferry terminal, wal...

So we left Christchurch this morning to make our way north along the east coast of the South Island. We also hit the only motorway on the South Island which lasts all of about 10 minutes! The scenery is nice but it's a lot more distant hills and mountains, then when we hit the Coastal road, that was really nice. We arrived in Kaikoura and drove out to see loads of seals. One of them was fairly active too. I was walking around and only just noticed them laid dow...