Happy New Year !! We hope you all had a great Christmas period & New Year's Eve. Our thoughts were with you all. Well, at last Wilson seniors arrived !!. We decided to meet them off the ferry at Picton. We were both really excited about seeing them, but also felt a little nervous. They arrived on the 22nd of December and had kindly booked us all into a hotel from the 23rd to the 27th in the lovely town of Akaroa on the banks peninsular. We made our way down the coast towards Akaroa, sadly the weather had been really miserable, windy, grey and raining. We could have been in England !! Akaroa is a really beautiful spot on the banks peninsular, just off from Christchurch. It is situated at the end of a sea inlet, perfectly sheltered from the Pacific and also home to Hector dolphins, the smallest of the dolphin family and strictly protected. The French saw the potential of the area as a fishing, whaling and timber rich area and tried to claim it for France. Luckily, the English were in the process of completing the signing of the treaty, which gave us soverenty of New Zealand. The French settlers were allowed to stay and stamped their influence on the area. All the streets in Akaroa still have French names & many of the restaurants are influenced by French cuisine. It has now become the place to go for wealthy New Zelanders, many of whome have holiday homes there. In fact the winter population of the town is 800 permanent residents and in summer grows to 8000 !!. It really was a beautiful place to go for Christmas. Mum and Dad had also booked us into a local restaurant for Christmas lunch, by Christmas day the weather had improved dramatically and it certainly didn't feel like england, looking out of our hotel window to palm tree's and gorgeous blue water. We had a great lunch and as usual eat far too much and collapsed in the afternoon. Mum and Dad bought out a copy of our wedding video, so we watched it a few times. It's amazing what things we had forgotten and it was so great to see it all again. On boxing day we had booked to go swimming with the dolphins, Mum and Dad opted to come and watch but not get in. The Hector dolphins are the rarest and smallest of the dolphin family, the whole area around Akaroa has been deemed a reserve with the aim of protecting and encouraging them. It wasn't long before we spotted some and quietly got in the freezing water. Your not allowed to touch the dolphins as their soo small and their skin can be easily damaged, but this didn't detract from the experience. The captain of the boat was very careful to make sure the dolphins gave a positive response when they saw us and if they saw any babies you weren't allowed in the water. We were lucky enough to see a nursery group of three mums with their babies. They were so cute, about the size of a rugby ball and you could see the wrinkles on their bodies where they had been curled up in the womb. Mum and Dad were only going to stay with us for five days, but after the fire extended their time with us to ten days. The only problem was we hadn't booked anywhere else and after making a few phone calls began to get worried that we wouldn't find anywhere. However we percivered and found an amazing place called Mount Vernon Lodge which was in the hills above Akoroa and looked out over the water. It is set in fifty acres of parkland, with several individual cabins. The also had a large six cabin complex with a beautifully apointed communal kitchen, lounge and fire pit area. It's usually rented out for corporate functions, but over Christmas they thankfully rented it out as individual rooms. They also had two gorgeous pigs, a donkey, a deer, two horses, peacocks, ducks etc etc. We did a lot of activities with Mum and Dad, went on some great walks, cycled up and around the rim of the old volcanoe, played golf (well, sort of of, Sam and I were caddies really !) ate like kings and generally had a really relaxing time, it actually felt like a holiday which was really nice. Because they had extended their stay, it also meant we could spend Mum's birthday with her. We went out for lunch at a gorgeous restaurant which has been voted the best in the South Island, after eating there we could see why !. We left Akaroa on New Years day, relatively hangover free for a change ! and we sadly said goodbye to Mum and Dad. It really was great to see them and made our Christmas very special. We now have about a month to see the rest of the South Island before heading off the Australia.