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Dear All,
After writing our last blog message we headed to a fish and chip shop in Kaikoura as I said we'd not had any of their supposedly 'Traditional Kiwi' dish. The meal was ok but we had a truely Totnesian travelling experience whilst there. We met a british couple (called Kat and Jamie) who were in NZ snowboarding. After a bit of chatting we discovered that Kat went to St Cuthbert Mayne School as a teenager and then onto Kennicott (Totnes) for sixthform..... Small world!. Oh Yeah she also designed my fat face trousers.......
Whale watching out of Kaikoura was amazing. We saw three adult male Spermwhales surfacing for air before they headed back down for more squid. We also saw some of the Albatros species and a massive pod of dusky dolphins. (I was also not sea sick... yippee!)
We headed up to Hanmer springs that afternoon and staying in a top ten campsite... with lovely views of the snowy mountains. We booked into the spa for a private thermal pool followed by a session in the out door pools. It was very magical as we were relaing in these hot pools under the stars.
Saturday we headed down to Christchurch to meet June and Richard who were kind enough to put us up for a few days. We met them at New Brighton and went to their wonderful place in the hills.... unbelieveable views of christchurch. We spent the day looking around the very English city of Christchurch. We went to the arts centre and had some food at the food market. Then we headed over to a little bay called sumner for a wonderful meal in a restaurant over looking the beach.
Sunday we headed back into Christchurch and looked around Catherdral Square and walked along the banks of the river Avon. We headed to the aquarium to view the Kiwi, it was dark but we saw one. We took Richard and June out to dinner to a Thai place which was wonderful to try lots of interesting dishes. June and Richard are lovely and origianlly from the UK. Richard is actually one of the extras in Lord of the Rings.....
We end our blog with yesterdays great adventure. We drove along the winding hill roads to Akaroa to go swimming with Dolphins. This was an amazing experience and the few photo's we took with our main camera show us dressed in dry suits which as you can imagine make you look like a whale, so not flattering. The swimming was with the small Hectors dolphins, which James nicknamed cute badger dolphins. It was all going really well until I developed a case of sea sickness which meant I had to remain on the boat for the second dip and view from the platform whilst keeping an eye on the horizon. We met a family from England on the tour who were visiting their grand parents in NZ.
Akaroa is however, an amazing little place and I think has now pipped others to the top spot for lovely places to visit. It is an old french colony with cute buildings all aroud a harbour.
We are currently in Arthurs Pass whaving taken the TransAlpine train here in the pouring rain... hoping for dry weather on the way home for some photos.
Love to you all,
Katie + James xx
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