After a day of travel by bus and plane and struggling to carry all our bags onto each bus connection and through Auckland airport I was soon reminded why I would be doing most of the driving in the south island. Aly was really struggling to wheel her large bag about especially around tight corners and I am just not totally convinced that the hire car would appreciate being tipped up onto its roof and dragged to its destination!! We finally instigated our way to the airport with our 3 large bags full of our life belongings fully intact but minus some material along the top and got checked in.

We arrived in a chilly Christchurch yesterday afternoon after a 1 hour flight and headed off to pick up our hire car from Juicy Lucy. After I got over the disappointment of not being able to meet Lucy or see how juicy she really was, we sorted out our paper work and were soon on our way after a quick demonstration on how to install the snow chains, if they were required. I didn't really pay attention to this and thought we will just hope for the best but was soon regretting it after we heard about a snow weather warning on the radio for the Christchurch region, opps!! After 2 hours of driving we arrived in Kaikoura without the need of the snow chains, thank goodness, and grabbed some food and hit the sack.

Kaikoura is 2 hours north of Christchurch on the east coast and was once famous for whaling back in the good old days but now famous for whale watching. We decided not to go whale watching but instead head to the seal colony at the Kaikoura Peninsula to see some seals and do the coastal walk around the headland. This proved to be worthwhile as the seals were out in force and it was amazing at how close you could get to them without freaking them out. The rainy weather didn't spoil the day and with a caffeine craving to fix we headed back into town only to find the entire town without electricity and everywhere was shut ..... no coffee for us then.

The snow has now hit the north of the south island and even though kaikoura had missed the worst of it apparently it had wiped out most of the east coast electricity supply. After a few hours it was back up and running again and we began planning our next port of call.

Tomorrow we are planning on visiting Hanmer Springs in the morning before driving south again to Timaru. We heard some roads are closed because of the snow but hopefully they will be clear by tomorrow and those snow chains won't be needed just yet!!