Today, Friday, we booked ourselves onto the "Akaroa Shuttle" (which is a tourist cum working bus running the 80+ kilometres round to the little town on the OTHER massive natural harbour of Akaroa. In a straight line it would be only 22kms but three rather large volcanoes (part of an eruption which lasted for FOUR MILLION YEARS!) stand in the way. They form the Banks Peninsula, named after the botanist on Captain Cook's ship (Endeavour?). Cook originally called it Banks Island because he thought (wrongly) that it was circum-navigable. The pictures uploaded say it all - a memorable place. After we had returned to our hotel Dennis Mantle and his wife Bev joined us for a drink. Dennis is a younger brother of Eric, our long time friend and former neighbour in Cheddar. We called Eric, back in the UK, while we were all together, then Dennis and Bev took us back to Port Hills where we boarded the gondola once more to enjoy Jill's Birthday meal. The chef, Steve, joined us a for a drink and the staff were very kind to Jill, presenting her with a copy of the menu, while the apprentices joined in by suitably decorating Jill's plate for the dessert. We won't bore you with another list of what we ate, just suffice it to say that we were the last off the hill and Steve (chef) offered us a lift back in his 23 year old jalopy!! After a couple of yards we had a flat tire and jill now has a lasting memory of spending the first minutes of her Birthday (it had gone midnight by now!) watching two men trying to change a wheel in the dark, using a cigarette lighter for illumination! Hey-ho! So Saturday will see us pick up the camper van and the chances to upload photo's and details of our movements may get slightly more erratic once more. Hopefully you can bear with us! We should be with Gary and Gail Williams in Dunedion by Thursday of next week, when we may get a chance to update you - till then we're just "on the road"! Lots of love to everyone from Jill (Birthday Girl!) and Richard xx