Were now in Christchurch, our final destination of New Zealand before we head to Australia. Before we gave our mini camper van back we thought we should explore some of the surrounding areas whilst we could still get around, so we headed to the coast east of the city to a place called New Brighton and just had a walk along the beach and peer, and we also went to the International Antarctic Centre just near the airport, this was alot of fun, we got to see more penguins!! This time being fed and up close which was pretty cool, but not as satisfying as seeing them in the wild. 60% of people going to the Antarctic leave from Christchurch and because no one owns the land you don't actually need a passport go get there. There is a room inside the centre with artificial snow that has been set to -8 degrees, but every half an hour a summer Antarctic storm starts that goes down to -18 degrees in temperature and wind chill... It was absolutely freezing in there!! The most fun part of the trip was the 'Hagglund' ride, this is the vehicle they use to get around down there, we got to go on an obstacle course set out of a lot of steep slopes and it went through 3m of water without it coming through!!

When it came to giving the car back in we had a slight dilemma when it started tipping it down with snow... it was cool because we hadn't seen snow for a while but when we tried to turn the windscreen wipers on they got jammed because there was so much snow on it haha... quite funny, as was the walk back to the hostel as it was absolutely freezing!!

Since then we have taken a stroll into the city centre and tried to organise everything ready to head to Oz, think were about ready now, and very excited to be heading somewhere alot warmer!!