Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Tekapo a small village next to the lake, our hostel is right on the waterfront and we open the patio doors in our room to an awesome view. We took a walk up into the village to pick up some shopping, a combination of healthy muesli, eggs and beans on toast and pasta! Touch wood so far we have had some brilliant weather with temperatures of 28 degrees minus the 94% humidity that we had in Fiji so we sat out and enjoyed the late ...

Today we arrived in another place of sadness, Christchurch. We did our best to avoid this city but our flight in was too late to catch a bus onwards so we needed to spend a night. It was very eerie as we drove around the city on a supermarket run many of the roads are still cordoned off by the police and army, one building is a complete mess and the one next to it still looks perfect, each building is marked with notices as to whether it is safe or not and ther...

"Nothing like a tsunami warning to keep you up all night!" Yesterday was our last on the Coral Coast and we were making the most of the sunshine by getting out early, our normal routine followed sea, pool, sunbed, relax! That was soon disrupted when we came down to dinner, a lovely peppered tuna steak by the way, when we saw on the news the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I think most people in the restaurant spent the evening swivelled round watchi...

I've taken the opportunity of an afternoon of rain to catch everyone up on what we've been doing. Honestly, not a lot unless you count going from our sunbeds to the pool or into the ocean! If last time Fiji was an experience this time it has been a complete holiday, we're not complaining! A couple of days ago we did two dives, at least we can now say we have dived Fiji the second time round! It was definitely worthwhile and being somewhere you wouldn't necessa...

Today we were up to enjoy the early sun, with no rain to be seen so a morning spent in the hammocks and reading on the grass was in order. We have a dive centre at our resort, by centre I mean a shed with an instructor in it but she's pretty busy with a rescue course and there seems to be a few interested in learning to dive so we booked up to dive tomorrow morning. We've heard good things of the diving and after not diving last time we were here now it is a mu...