Day 137, 138 - Akaroa, South Island - Thursday 1st, Friday 2nd March 2012

We woke up knackered as we'd hardly slept a wink in the night due to a massive storm with heavy rain and what felt like gale force winds. I woke up several times thinking the van was going to topple over!! We looked out the camper window to see mist, rain and fog - brilliant! It's colder than England!!

With the cold weather upon us we decided to treat ourselves to a hot breakfast out and headed to Bully Hayes restaurant for a full fry up for Adam and smoked salmon eggs benedict for me followed up flat white coffee's and hot chocolate. The restaurant also had free Wi-Fi so we took advantage of this and made ourselves comfortable for a few hours.

Come lunchtime the clouds and rain had passed and so we made our way up the 3 hour walk to the top of the Northhill and then came down and explored the town for the rest of the afternoon. Akaroa is a lovely little town but also quite strange as it was NZ's first French settlement and still to this day flies the French flag all over the town - even the street names are French! After walking around and also booking our swimming with dolphin's trip for 8.30am the next morning (very exciting!) we drove back to our free camping spot and settled down for the night.

We woke up early and had some porridge ready for our morning swim with the Hector dolphins - they are the smallest dolphins in the world at only 1.4 metres long and are only found in NZ.

We arrived at the wharf and checked in; the lady explained that due to the storm the day before the swell was quite big and therefore the waves might be big - we didn't think much of this and quickly got into our wet suits and jumped onto the boat. Once on the boat we had our safety briefing and then got out on the front deck to watch for the dolphins as the boat went out of the harbour. As soon as we reached the open sea it became apparent that the lady hadn't been lying when she said the waves would be big - they were massive!!! They were the biggest waves we'd ever seen and were probably about 15 - 20 foot and so every wave that we went over felt like a rollercoaster. We were keen to get in the water and so as soon as we spotted a couple of dolphins we were in the water making the funny noises through our snorkel mask tubes (apparently the dolphins are more interested and will come over to investigate if you make noise under the water). The dolphins scarpered as soon as they saw us and so we were back on the boat again looking for the next pod to try and swim with. Whilst trying to concentrate on not being sick we started chatting to a nice couple from England who had just come from Argentina - they were really lovely and gave us lots of tips and even said they had some food in their camper van we could have as they were leaving that day. People keep giving us free food - brilliant! After a while we spotted some more dolphins - they are so tiny and look like mini killer whales. So again we jumped in and splashed around and made funny noises - however, it seemed that the dophins were not in the mood as again they swam away. Unfortunately it was time for the boat to return to shore so the man said that as we hadn't been able to actually swim with the dolphins we would get a 70% refund - we were chuffed with this as hadn't expected it as we had still seen the dolphins!

Freezing cold we arrived back at the pier and jumped in the warm shower - our first for nearly 3 days!! Once showered, we started our drive Lake Tekapo. The drive took about 4 hours with stopping along the way for numerous photo's!

Tonight we are paying to stay in a campsite which means showers and facilities! So with this in mind we cooked up a Lamb stew and had it in the back of the camper with a glass of red - bliss!