Our final trip on the Stray bus on Thursday got us in to Christchurch,
the 'most English' of all city's in NZ, late in the afternoon and
after our driver dropped us off at the wrong hostel we were actually
pretty glad to be off the bus by this point, even if it has been
really good overall.

The average age of our hostel room was about 50 and there was a pretty
special crowd there all told, especially the guy with a hole in his
shirt who claimed he worked for the government but only broke off from
staring into thin air to tell you a story about sinking German U-boats
during the war, and a guy who Hutch was convinced was a tramp! (Turns
out he did his washing up so was either a very well-mannered tramp but
more likely a scruffy guest) So along with our travelling buddy
Manuela, we spent the evening finding a new hostel, cooking a meal and
chatting to a couple of Dutch guys who were from the bus too.

After a faffy morning on Friday, which was pretty surreal due to the
guy outside our hostel playing Christmas songs on his bagpipes, we
checked in to our new place across town and then mooched around
Cathedral square where there were loads stalls, and just generaly
soaked up the gorgeous weather we were being treated to!

We had a stroll through the park and botanic gardens and lapped up the
sun before heading back and deciding that it had been too long since
our last night out and so we decided to go out for a Friday night pub
crawl. The 5 of us had a good night after a slow start, and the crawl
was even named after my alter ego J and came with another pair of hot
pants (or should i say Y fronts) to add to the collection!

We actually found Christchurch to be quite a nice place to spend a
couple of days, even if it didn't have any of the big activities to do
that other places in NZ does.

After saying bye to Manuela on Saturday morning, we filled our last
day in NZ with an obligatory visit to both Pak n Save and Warehouse
and doing other bits of shopping and organising - hardly the most
exciting way to spend the final day but it was all stuff that needed
to be done! We ended the day with fish and chips and a beer at the
hostel, and then kinda depressed ourselves when realising the weather
forecast for the next 10 days in Fiji was solid rain!

During the night, I managed to sneak out of the room at 4am to watch
United without Hutch noticing, (it's got her wondering what else I've
sneaked out do) and managed to squeeze in a couple of hours more kip
after it before we got our transfer to the airport!

After finally finding the right check in queue, our worst fears only
grew when the guy behind us told us that Fiji actually had a cyclone
warning - not what we were hoping for!!

And so our 5 and a half weeks in New Zealand drew to a close, with us
feeling a little sad that we had to leave. We have done so many
amazing things whilst we have been here and have been totally blown
away by the natural beauty of the place. It has definitely left a
lasting impression on both of us both and exceeded our expectations -
things just seem to keep getting better and better!!