We woke to the tannoy of 2 cruise ships having arrived far below us in the bay. Over breakfast we exchanged stories with James, Jess and Rocket (they had chocolate chip banana pancakes...) and we were soon weaving our way back out of Onuku only to start climbing again, up towards the ridge surrounding Akaroa. We parked up when we could drive no further and took the 'misty summits' track along the ridge, taking in the glittering bay filled with the cruise liners tender boats to our left and the bleak coast to our right, with nothing but steep, rugged hillside in between. After a couple of hours tramping we had returned to the enema, which had cooled down significantly, and Bob set our sights on the chocolaterie in Lyttleton who were supposed to do the best hot chocolate, ever, and it was pretty amazing! Tall mugs, cream, ying and yang chocolate straws and 70g of chocolate in each thick serving made for a pretty amazing experience. The 'Cafe She' was a pretty cool place and the menu for lunch looked even more exciting with chocolate entering the description of most of the savoury dishes in one way or another.

We drove on into Christchurch with an hour or so to spare until we had arranged to see Phil and Lorna. As we were honked and beeped through the city centre, we couldn't quite put our finger on what was wrong but where there should have been huge office buildings there were carparks of rubble, the skyline was dotted with cranes and the air filled with the sound of construction.

The extent of the earthquakes was astonishing but the feeling of regeneration around the city was infectious. We parked up on a patch of rubble which would have been prime real estate and walked past the ruins of the cathedral, into the re-start shopping mall, an artistically thrown together stack of brightly coloured shipping containers housing the shops which had been evicted by the quake. We spent a few hours wandering around the bustling city centre, scarred by the boarded up office buildings but amazed by the regeneration from the rubble.

We headed out to Lincoln to track down Phil and Lorna's new pad. We were not disappointed as we drove through the swanky outskirts and turned into the driveway up to the electric gates of a very tasteful mansion, assuming we had the wrong address we gawped until we saw Phil waving from the self contained cabin in the garden.

It was very difficult not to be jealous hearing about Phil and Lorna's situation, I even got an impromptu tour of one of the practices after Phil forgot his on call pager! Life for Kiwi vets seemed very relaxed and their cabin was perfect.

We caught up, reminisced, and ate Lasagne a la Lorna before having the luxury of collapsing into a proper bed. Bob could not stop grinning, it was so nice to catch up with old friends and being enveloped the soft pillows and duvet was the icing on the cake.