Once we reached Christchurch the first task was to secure those all important tickets for the Canterbury Crusaders Super 15 rugby game against the South African Kings team from Port Elizabeth. Once this had been successfully achieved we ventured into the city centre by bus. Much of the city has been destroyed by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and we spent some time walking around the Botanic Gardens and what was left of the actual centre, although large parts had either been bulldozed or were barricaded off. We were amazed by some of the ingenuity shown - for instance they had created a new shopping mall out of storage containers and it looked really funky! We popped into the earthquake museum and were touched by some of the personal stories there - 185 people lost their lives in the February 2011 quake and many had sad tales to tell, some with happy endings.

In the evening we walked to the Crusader stadium and were entertained by all the razzamatazz. They have about 6 mounted crusaders riding round the pitch before the match saluting the crowd, practically all of which had a flag to wave, and a team of cheerleaders called "The Maidens" whose gyrations complete with sword and shield seemed to keep Roger pretty interested. It was strange to be at a match with no away fans but really good to see Dan Carter do his stuff (which he did very effectively) and Peterson from the Kings side was really quick. Roger definitely enjoyed the type of rugby which they played - very fast and with very little kicking. Luckily the Crusaders won convincingly (55 to 17) so we all went home in a good mood!

The next day we drove to Kaikoura with the intention of doing some whale spotting. Unfortunately the whales were out of range so we booked for the next morning and took a 12 km walk around the peninsula instead with seals and plenty of seabirds to admire. We repaired to the camp hot tub on our return, but despite significant hinting, I failed to obtain a cup of tea and slice of cake whilst easing my aching joints in the hot water!

We have only a couple of nights left in the campervan and seem to have sorted out a pretty effective division of labour. We share the cooking and shopping (after a fashion) and Rog does all the man jobs like connecting/disconnecting the power and gas, dealing with the dirty water, assembling the bed, making conversation with everybody else on the park, checking facebook, emails, comments on the blog and facebook again and loading up the photos. I, on the other hand, do all the laundry, washing and drying up and putting away, writing the blog, tidying up all Roger's possessions, deciding where we are going to go and stay and what we are going to do the next day and stowing things away prior to taking to the road. Works for us anyway!

On Monday we took the whalewatching cruise on a high powered jet catamaran with a very informative nature specialist talking about all the wild life on offer. We saw myriads of sea-birds including some impressive albatross and loads of seals lying in the water, warming their tummies. Just as we were about to give up hope, the underwater listening device picked up a whale. We sped to the spot and were privileged to spend about 5 minutes watching a sperm whale before he once again dived down into the depths giving us a wave with his tail.

On the way back to Christchurch we spotted a huge pod of dolphins (getting on for 100) all frolicking and leaping out of the water and spinning around. It was quite incredible and we stopped to watch for a good half hour. It was shortly after this, when we had recommenced our journey and stopped for lunch, that I checked the rental agreement for the campervan and discovered that we should return it in quarter of an hour rather than (as we were under the impression) the next day. A couple of frantic phone calls later and we had arranged an extended drop off time and accommodation for the night. We drove the final hour to Christchurch in a real stress but fortunately there were "no worries" and everything was sorted!

We have tomorrow to spend in Christchurch and then we fly out to Hong Kong on the next stage of the journey. We will be sorry to leave NZ as it is such a beautiful country and Asia will be more of a challenge in many ways. Still an exotic culture will be exciting and we can always dream of one day returning to the "land of the Long Cloud".