Kia Ora!

For anyone who was worried Sam finally recovered her bag late Saturday evening - we weren't panicking too much !! We spent a really nice weekend in Christchurch, going out for a nice veggie meal on Sat night at a place called Dux De Lux and then on Sunday we went for a rather civilised punt down the river with a very eccentric punter man who told us some random facts about Christchurch and bored us with his not-so-funny jokes. We were very excited on Monday morning to be picking up our campervan however that excitment was short lived as when we arrrived at the rental place we were given a 2 bed van with no shower or toilet! Not really what we had been expecting - apparently there was a mix up with our reservation. We were then informed that there were no available 3 bed vans and so they gave us the option of a 2 bed van with one person having to drive a car!! Not the best! After trying to fob us off to another rental company (which didn't actually do 3 bed vans, although they gave us a very nice brew as we spent so much time in their office!) Ezy, the original rental company, finally admitted responsibilty and miraculously found a 3 bed van for us - we think they stole it from an elderly couple which we felt slightly bad about! So after a long and frustrating day we eventually got our van and set off north to Kaikoura at 5:30pm, meaning we had to drive in the dark along the rather narrow and windy roads, although it was probably for the best that we couldn't see off the sides of the road as they were probably sheer cliff drops!

Whilst in Kaikoura we did a dolphin swim which involved going out to sea in a small boat and being dropped off into a pod of about 300 wild dolphins. It was an absolutely amazing experience, they swam so close to us and we tried to entertain them by making noises through our snorkels and swimming in circles but they weren't too impressed! After about an hour of swimming we headed back to shore due to the fact that the wind was picking it up making it rather difficult to swim back to the boat. The not so nice part was getting changed out of our wetsuits on the boat, trying not to flash at the other swimmers but we were all so cold that we could hardly move! After a brew to warm us up we set off for our next destination of Blenheim.

Blenheim is the main town in the Marlborough wine region of New Zealand so we thought it would be just rude not to sample any of the local wines! We spent a whole afternoon visiting 5 local wineries and sampling all their champagnes, white and red wines as well as some rather tasty olive oil. Needless to say by the time we were dropped back to our van we were all rather jolly, but we all think we learnt a bit about wine - we are definately wine buffs now! Next stop on our tour was a small town called Mouteka which is just south of the Abel Tasman National Park. We spent a day in the park itself; first of all we got a boat to take us up the coast where we saw baby seals (very cute!) and the amazing scenery, and then we walked a whole 12kms(!) back to our van through the park. We all felt very healthy and fit when doing the walk, but this was not the case the next day when we all woke up feeling very achy indeed!

At the moment we are heading south down the west coast aiming to get to the Franz Josef glacier tomorrow in order to do a glacier hike on MOnday - its meant to be spectacular. The weather has improved - although still a bit chilly the sun is shining and there is no rain - fingers crossed! We are all loving our campervan which we have named 'Lola' due to the fact the it has a picture of a rather sexy lady on the back who we think could be Lola the showgirl. We've been spending our evenings watching DVD's as we have a portable DVD player (very posh!), drinking G&T's or playing poker which we are getting rather good at, despite the fact that the only thing we have to bet with is dry pasta spirals! So far we've had no near misses even though we think we have covered around 700kms in the past 5 days. We've also successfully reverse parked which we know a lot of you thought would never happen!! We've been cooking for ourselves every night to keep the costs down and are eating very well, however we thought we'd bagged a bargain the other day when we picked up a massive bag of oranges very cheaply only to discover when we went to peel them that they were in fact lemons - fortunately they go very well with the gin and it means we now have an excuse to buy more gin to use them up!

We are planning an action packed week ahead but we'll update you after all the excitment! Hope everybody is well and that England is still doing ok without us.

Lots of love

Becki, Sam and Jen xx xx xx

P.S we are rather upset by the lack of messages that have been posted on our messgae board- have you all forgotten about us already!?!?!