Yesterday we woke up to snow peaked mountains! It was beautiful, we hadn't seen them the night before as we had arrived in the night to Kaikoura! The landscape in New Zealand is pretty much picture perfect everytime you look out the window! We stopped off at a seal colony on our journey, and there were so many cute little pups playing! We then moved onto Picton, where we dropped off people going to the North Island, and picked up people who were coming down from it. We then made our way to Nelson. We had all afternoon and it was a nice day, so Arthur and I walked up to the centre of New Zealand, and had amazing views out over Nelson, the sea and the mountain ranges! We watched the sunset, with 2 girls we had made friends with the night before and then made our way back to the hostel for dinner. There were 2 really nice girls in our room, but sadly they weren't catching our bus the next day. We had also passed through that day, the place where Ernest Rutherford was born, and also a place called Pelrous, where a dolphin name Pelrous Jack used to guide ships through the French Pass. He guided boats through everyday, then one day a person tried to kill him, and injured him. He returned after a while and carried on guiding people. Until a few years later when that boat came back and he recognised the noises it made and didn't come out to guide it and the ship sank!

Today we had a pretty early start again (made worse as journeys always make me so tired!). Our first stop was Lake Roto-iti. Which was a beautiful lake with mountains going along both edges, and a third, snow peaked one, at the end. It was really beautiful. We had a walk through the bush there and tasted some sap off the trees, which was prododuced from the anal gland of the wood weaval. It was sweet like honey! After that we sat down for lunch and lots of people jumped in the lake, Arthur jumped in first! I was going to but couldn't be bothered by the time it came round to it, and it was too cold! There were some very adventurous ducks, who, whilst I was swatting away one (literally hitting it!) came and grabbed my sandwhich! I was not impressed! We stopped off a couple more times along the way, and sawa flood marker showing the water came up to 16m one time!
That afternoon Arthur and I went Jet Boating! (only 2 other people off the bus decided to come too) But it was so much fun, the boat goes so fast (only needs 4 inches of water to move!) and he drove us straight towards the cliff edges, would turn away then turn back towards it, quite scary!! He also did lots 360 degree turns which were so much fun! There was a nice warm hot chocolate and fire waiting for us when we got back to the centre, we were then dropped at our hostel. We are off to Lake Mahnipua tomorrow.