WestwardGo!

Hello from that weird limbo between Christmas day and the New Year. In keeping with proper tradition we have only eaten leftovers for several days now and have no idea what day of the week it is. This is where we spent the big day itself: (we are very very lucky!) Summer is in full swing here, finally, although the heavy rain last week means the grass is growing like mad - cue lots more lawn mowing, even Amy has a chance of using the ride on mower at this rate. Strangely it is very hard to find proper Christmas cake here in NZ so we had to improvise. It also turns out that marzipan isn't something you can buy in supermarkets, thank goodness for Delia Smith cook books! Mike is clearly an expert at pet sitting..... We have also discovered that one of us takes swimming a lot more seriously than the other, no prizes for guessing who I'm afraid! Plus thanks to the cottonwood trees in the local park we even had a chance of a white Christmas. We a...

Safely into Christchurch our first stop was to the rental car depot. Several loops of the one-way system later and we successfully found somewhere to park the van while we completed the paperwork for our new trusty steed, a "budget" Nissan. We had considered returning the van first then collecting the car however this would mean carrying all of our accumulated baggage around Christchurch, the volume of extra shoes (gumboots), tea bags (all essential) and lack of any organised packing meant this was not the preferred option! Thanks to Nissan's ability to create Tardis-like interiors our 10 weeks of van life fitted comfortably into the boot and we waved a sad farewell to "Easy Tiger". Next came what we thought would be an easy mission, finding somewhere to eat lunch. Christchurch city centre is still being rebuilt after the devastation of the 2011 earthquakes and it seems car parking is the last thing on the list. After getting lost in one-way systems, unhelpful...

Arriving in the Marlborough Sounds at the northern tip of the South Island we made our way onto the deck to check out the incredible views. We disembarked the ferry and made our way into the town of Picton for supper, afterwards we went for a play in the park (never too old!). The park was also the perfect place to admire the evening light across the sounds. We had a dolphin watch tour booked for the morning, a generous gift from our first HelpX hosts, Guy and Lou. We made an early start and arrived at the marina only to find that the tour was cancelled due to low numbers, disappointed and deflated we drowned our sorrows with pots of tea and racks of toast at the local cafe.  On the bright side this did mean we had gained half a day on our already tight time frame for the south island so we didn't hang around after breakfast. From Picton we headed west, along the north coast and towards Abel Tasman National Park. Our first stop was a viewpoint high above Tasma...