Hi Everyone,

Up really early today with a painful back...I must write to Toyota Motor Co and ask them to make the seats easier to sleep in.

Went into town at 7am and found a place open and had a cooked breakfast.....just the thing to kick start my heart and the day!!

8.30am...checked in for the "Dolphin Encounter"....so what is this???

Basically 12/16 of you go out on a small catamaran from the Harbour and go about 1 mile offshore to where the sea is deep. Around this area large pods of Hectors Dolphins swim around totally naturally. You get into a full wetsuit and snorkelling kit and the boat manoevers so that you can slide off the back of the boat in front of the advancing pod of dolphins. You then are told to do "silly things" like sing, swim with arms next to your body and also in tight sircles and dive too... all these things should attract the dolphins to come and look at you and circle you closely whiel they inspect "what you are". When they have passed, its swim back to baot, jump back board and the captian take the boat out in front of the dolphins agin for you to jump in again.

Well, words simply cant describe it...so I am not really going to try to here. Other than to say the crew reckoned there were alomost 300 dolphins in several pods for some reason together and we had 2.5 hours of jumping in and out and swimming around. The group were 14 of us and Ii was one of the last out int he end, many of the others, mainly Americans, ran out of steam swimming! I was deteremined to stay in and enjoy the experience and I think my last week of hiking may have helped me fitness wise.

They came so close you could, but shouldnt, touch them - stunning - best thing I have done of my travels so far!

Other good bit was the the weather was cutting up rough again with the wind coming back, and over half of the Americans were throwing up into buckets ont he way back. the crew could see i was fine and so gave me the job of giving buckets out to the spew people.....it was fun and also they couldnt brag whilst chucking up their breakfast bagels!!

Back to port and then into the car and rush to the Whale Watching site for my 3pm trip.....s***...the wind had come back agaian and they had cancelled all trips for the rest of the day! Big dissapointment. Tim - this is all your fault I reckon- you just didnt want me to see Whales before Sarah did you????

Still, after thinking about it, I was really pleased that I had doen the Dolphin expereince int he morning. Funny enough on the way back, the Dolphin place had a huge sign up saying the 2 afternoon sailing had been cancelled due to wind.

If onyl I could stay another day, But the hire car has to be back in Christchurch tommorrow and its Christmas eve,a nd they shut at midday for 2 days and Chritmas day I have a flight Christchurch-Auckland..so far to much to trya nd change/delay.

As you may have guess I consoled myself in the evening with a few pints of Speights and Sheepshaggers...fantastic name for a local brewed lager!!

I also really enjoyed my bed after last nights misery!

Tommorrow - a 150km drive to Christchurch and drop of the car!