This morning the back packers awake and go for a jog- yes we do. That makes us a little later for breakfast than we intend. Its an interesting thing getting your own breakfast in a strange kitchen- you are never sure if you are helping yourself to someone elses stuff or sitting in someone elses seats. anyway we muddle through and manage to eat half a loaf of toast and steve got a cup of tea and we talked to a french family- in english- sort of.

We wash up our own stuff like you are supposed to but its a little embarrassing as the french family have left some washing up on our table- we braisen it out trying to wonder loudly what to do with the stuff the french family left behind and run for it.

Off we go to look around the town- its takes us about half an hour to walk everywhere. We book our tickets on the trans coastal express to go south tomorrow and an apartment room in Christchurch. We go into the i centre (information bureau) to ask if there might be a problem with accommodation first following the quake and a very eastern european lady says I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEM BEFORE- like that and tries to insist we book somewhere expensive. We say no thank you and book our own place on their computor- she seems miffed and no one says good bye when we leave. We shout goodbye anyway just in case- we are truly inter continental back packers today.

We have a lovely lunch in town and try to take pictures of ourselves with the camera on the timer- the camera keeps falling on its back just as it takes another lovely picture of the sky- we can see it is getting warmer and the clouds are clearing. We laugh a lot and when we finally get a picture steve is very blurred- its tough being the camera man with dodgy equipment