Today is going home day to the rest of our lovely family and 2 Welsh Springer Spaniels who have been looked after most lovingly by my brother and wife. We leave Becky and Rob to 8 weeks of packing and selling and returning home to .England to start a new life together there. Its been a fantastic 3.4 days lots of fun times together and my tour of the South Island has given them a chance to see the island before they head back to England. I shall all take away w...

Today we took ourselves off to the Banks Peninsula for a boat trip with Black Cat Cruises. What a treat we had. Beautiful sunny day we took a ride out to Akaroa, a harbour village on the peninsula. The journey from Pegasus incorporates beautiful scenary along the way. The harbour as small amount of restaurants and shops along the harbour and beach front. The Inlet is a beautiful blue colour surrounded by the hills. We were really lucky lucky on the trip and ca...

Today with Rob back at work the four of us went to Christchurch. We bought tram tickets and enjoyed getting off and on. We visited the museum, art gallery and the Re start mall. Pizza at the restart mall was just fab. A hot hot day and the tram driver was very interesting with his dialogues as we travelled round, On our return home we headed to,the beach with Rob for some more fun in the surf.  The Botanical gardens had been recommended to me but I have to ...

Today we headed for Kaikoura had some very tasty freshly caught fish with chips and witnessed some of the earth quake damage to the roads and bridges. A lot of repairs have been made to the roads already. We played a round of a 18 hole crazy golf which was fun and stopped on side of road to watch the Fur Seals playing and swimming. This I could do all day! There were also black oystercatchers and herons. It is sad to see the shops that are still closed and bui...

Back at Bec and Robs for a week before we return home we set to washing all our holiday clothes. Beautiful and sunny and hot here somall dried very quickly. We played croquet and headed down to beach on .robs return from work for some body surfing. The beach is a large sandy ba backed by dunes and pine forest and stretches for miles with horse, bike and walking tracks.  There are are lots of birds in the forest and dunes as well as oystercatchers, terns and gu...