Kaikoura is famous for whale, dolphin and seal watching and is therefore a popular travel destination. We went to the i-site to gather some information about these activities. Of course, they all were quite expensive: 80$ for dolphin watching - 170$ for swimming with them. We decided to do a small kayak tour to a seal colony because we couldn't do a kayak tour in the Abel Tasman National Park. In the brochure was written that the seals would swim around the kayak and that you could watch them hunting for squids.

That's why we had high expectations when we climbed into our kayak and started to paddle around. The sky was shimmering in its most beautiful colours: from white to grey and the ocean, which normally is really blue, had the same colour as a puddle of mudd. The wind wasn't helping either. By then, we didn't care much about the weather because the seals were the main attraction. When we finally made it to the colony, we hoped to see them playing around. But they were just lying around on their rocks, doing nothing else than sleeping. We soon realised that there would be no swimming around and having fun on their part. It was just a windy day with us sitting in our kayak, feeling the water getting into our clothes. The fact that seals hunt mostly at night time, would had been a valuable information before we actually booked the trip.

Akaroa, which is on the "Banks Peninsula" to the east of Christchurch, was our next destination. We stopped in Christchurch to investigate the site of the earthquake. It was a strange feeling to see the centre of a big city to be locked down and almost completely empty. Something didn't add up but Mr. Watson and myself had to postpone our investigation to a later moment in time. We didn't spend much time in Akaroa and made our way to Geraldine.

We picked Geraldine because it was close to Mt Sunday on which Edoras was built in "Lord of the Rings". Geraldine turned out to be a nice and friendly village and the hosts of the hostel was a lovely old couple. The lady told us that there was an old cinema in the city which was built in the 30's and still uses such an old projector. The friendly owner of the cinema showed us around which very cool of him. The residents of Geraldine donated their old sofas to the cinema. There were about 20 sofas standing among the other old cinema chairs. We paid 10$ dollar to watch a rather new movie with Ben Stiller and Eddy Murphy in this nostalgic cinema. The movie was actually better than expected.

Mt Sunday is a small hill in the middle of a plain. We made our way up to the top and had a picnic up there. When we were full up, we dressed appropriately and re-enacted all the scenes from "Lord of the Rings" which took about 10 hours. On our way down, we didn't follow the normal track because we are two unbelievably tough adventurers who are constatly looking for a kick. That's why we walked across the field until a small but deadly stream was blocking our path. The stream didn't seem very threatening but it turned out to be really cold and the current in the middle of the stream was quite powerful.

Oscar decided to cross it while I wanted to go around it so that we don't risk to let my camera get soaked in the case that I would had slipped. His boiling viking blood gave him the necessary courage to try the crossing. He undressed himself to his boxers ( I'm not sure if that was really necessary) and made his way through the Stream of Death. He arrived on the otherside unharmed but with numb feet. After a longer discussion about walking through the water or taking the "Way of Cowardness", Oscar used the meanest of all weapons to convience me : "Reversed Psychology", which of course worked. We are now probably the first human beings who dared to challenge the gods and managed to cross the water unharmed. After we warmed our feet in the sun, we walked back to our car with our heads held up high.

Our room mate was an older, weir man from Luxemburg who was annoying me quite a bit during the night. First of all, we was chewing air and clincked with his teeth. I don't know if he imagined eating a sandwich or maybe a chocolate cake, but it was a bother either way. The really bad part was that he knew the art of snorring which made it impossible for me to sleep. So I spent one and a half night on the sofa in the livining room.