Well it's our last day in New Zealand... sobsob! Can't believe how quickly it's gone. We've spend the last few days in Christchurch, apparently New Zealand's most "English" city - the weather certainly has been!

Last Friday we took a bus up to Kaikoura for 2 nights. Kaikoura is a place known for it's marine wildlife because just offshore there's a big underwater canyon which makes the water really nutrient rich (i was listening on the bus!), so they have seals, orcas, dolphins, albatross etc. It would have been a lovely stay except the weather on Friday and Saturday was horrible - grey and rainy - and it kind of rubs off on your mood. We wanted to do a trip out to swim with the dolphins and it was worrying when we heard all trips were being cancelled because of the weather. But we were booked on an early one for the Saturday morning and were so lucky - the winds were down and the sea was calm so we got to go and SWIM WITH DOLPHINS!! It was incredible. It was hard getting up though - we had to be at the centre by 5.20 am, ouch! Then we got all wetsuited out - goggles, snorkel, flippers and everything - and got in the boat out to sea - the thought of jumping in the cold water though made me want to go back to bed! But then we reached a huge pod of dolphins and got in to swim with them and it was just amazing. You're not allowed to reach and touch them because they're wild, but you're told to look as "dolphin-like" as possible, to wiggle and make noises and things, and if you look interesting enough they come and check you out - they say that you're there to entertain the dolphins, not the other way around! Sometimes they swim round and round you and you have to try and keep up and they're so fast. Apparently we were really lucky - the pod we found had about 500 dolphins and they seemed quite interested in us divers and hung around for ages, apparently that doesn't always happen. I did a classic error though and was so focused on these dolphins that i swam right into the boat! haha trust me. I took some pictures but they're on an underwater camera so will have to wait a bit before I can see how they come out. Afterwards we got a hot shower (well, hosepipe) and hot chocolate on the boat to warm us up, and needless to say we went straight back to bed when we got back! We managed to get up and go wine tasting later on though - a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

Christchurch has been pretty quiet. On Sunday when we got back we had a mooch around the market in Cathedral Square, which had some pretty good things, picked up a little nz memento! Then we wandered over to the botanical gardens which were really pretty, and spent a little time sunning ourselves there (the first time we'd seen the sun in a few days). Our last full day was fun as Amy, Ellie and I hired bikes and went biking round Hadley Park - felt like i was a little girl again! We also got the bus to "New Brighton" but it turned out to be nothing like Brighton, especially since we went on Monday when apparently everywhere was shut (no-one had thought to mention this to us). But we did get fish and chips and eat it by the sea... so English!

We fly out to Melbourne in a couple of hours, so next time you hear from me shall be from Australia!

Bye for now,

Elle xXx