Day 73 - Sun 11th Jan - Blenheim, Marlborough Blenheim is in the heart of the Marlborough wine region, home of the NZ Sauvingnon blanc. Not a long journey to Blenheim so I got there about 11am, and headed straight out on a wine tour at 1pm! There were 9 of us in the minibus and we got to influence where we went which was good and unlike a lot of the tours. We went to a couple of the big ones, Wither Hills and Cloudy Bay (twice!), and then two other smaller ones...

Day 71 - Fri 9th Jan -Kaikoura Another 8am bus departure this morning to leave Christchurch for the final time and head to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is famous for two things 1) dolphins 2) whales. The reason we had decided to go to Akaroa to see the dolphins the day before is because they were predicted bad storms to the nexy two days....the two days I was going to be in Kaikoura! The weather wasn't too bad on the way up and I got booked on the swimming with dolphins...

Day 70 - Thurs 8th Jan - Akaroa Mary had taken the day off work today so that we could do something together before I left. We went to Akaroa for the day which is a couple of hours drive from Christchurch. We had been hoping that I would be able to do swimming with dolphins there, but we arrived about lunch time and they were all fully booked for the afternoon. So instead we booked ourselves of a boat trip along the peninsular. The boat trip was really good, ...

Day 68 - Tues 6th Jan - Christchurch Arrived in Christchurch about midday, had lunch with Rosan and some of the others from the bus, then did a bit of shopping as I needed to get a new mobile phone. The one I had taken with me (which was an old one), had gone from working fine in Brazil, to not working at all in Argentina, to working ok in Auckland, to working ok in NZ but only if it was plugged in at the same time, to split in two pieces and now completely unu...

Day 67 - Mon 5th Jan - Lake Tekapo Only half a day on the bus today from Dunedin to Tekapo and we arrived about 1pm. That was just in time for me to head out on a 2 hour horse ride in the afternoon. I had been researching good riding places in NZ since I arrived (good = suitable for an experienced rider) and the website for this place looked quite good. When I turned up I was told that the whole thing would be walking only and I was with 3 total beginners. Not ...