We arrived in Chrischurch, early afternoon and it was cold we were glad we had our warm clothes on. We took the bus to the City and found our hotel, hotel so, a brand new modern hotel which was fitted with mood lighting, a small bathroom and a great tv, it was a great option for our first night. We had a walk around the small City and it started to sleet. we grabbed a hot chocolate and made our way back to the hotel. That evening we decided to head to the flying burritto brothers for a delicious Mexican Meal afterwards we found our self in a great bar with live music and a roaring fire a good night.

The following day we headed back to the airport to pick up our hired campervan, it took forever to be shown the ropes and evenually we were upgraded to a britz van as the one they had set aside for us had a loose water tank. There was lots of road warnings in the office as there had been lots of snow, we were advised to take the snow chains. We drove North along the coast stopping along the way for a food shop. We were pleased to see that it is much cheaper here than Australia. We headed on to Hanmer Springs a small town famous for it's hot springs. The countryside was beautiful lots of snowy mountains a very surreal landscape. We spend the nght at the campsite and loved how big the van was, we had 3 duvets and a heater and were toasty warm. On the Saturday we had our breakfast and headed to the springs, it was cold and we changed in to our swimming stuff and walked bare feet across the concrete, I thought my feet were going to fall off. Then we sunk into the warm water feet tingling because of the cold then hot, but it was gorgeous. It was busy but extremely relaxing and such a lovely setting with the snow all around. We moved between the swimming pool, sulpher pools and hot pools. After a few hours we became wrinkled and made our way to the small village where we walked around the shops and browsed the bargains. That afternoon we decided to head onwards and we followed the coast road North to Kaikoura, the name means meal of crayfish, and the marine life here is famous, the dolphins and whales are just off of the coast. We struggled to find somewhere to stay and settled on a bakpackers campsite, the weather was wet and miserable. We had some food and made our way into town, we found a pub had some beer and watched the all blacks win.