Si's Year Out! (Plus Europe! Plus Morocco!): Christchurch, scary motor parks and Kaikoura!

We hit Cathedral Square as soon as we arrived in Christchurch and looked round the market. It was Sara's birthday the next day so I took her to the Tram Restaurant, an old tram car converted into a swish restaurant, so we spent the evening chugging round the city eating lovely food! The next day we went to the science museum to play glow in the dark mini golf and chilled out in the city's lovely botanic gardens before heading North.

We were trying to make it up to Kaikoura but it was getting late, so we had to stop somewhere on the way. We felt like staying in a motor park and saw a sign for one in a small random village on the way up. After paying, we had a chat to the guy who owned the place and both decided he was seriously weird. As the evening went on the cabins there started to remind us of the motel cabins in Psycho, and backpacker murder reports were running through our minds....anyway, we made it through the night! And left (very) early for Kaikoura.

On the outskirts of the town is the Kaikoura Winery so we decided to do a wine tasting tour. After tasting a few drops we were shown all around the winery including their underground wine cellar. The cellar took a lot of time and money to build and is one of the only underground cellars in NZ but, after all that, they have found that they make more money hiring it out for weddings than actually storing wine in it!!! Next we went to a seal colony to try and spot some seals. While squinting our eyes at a suspected seal on a rock far out to sea, we practically tripped over a big seal that was just sunning himself in the car park!! here was also a young seal just on the beach in front of the car park and neither of them paid any attention to the tourists milling around taking pictures!

Our final morning on the South island was spent driving to Picton to catch the ferry back over to Wellington. We arrived back on the North island late in the afternoon and found a place to sleep just North of Wellington. We had only five days before we needed to return the car to explore the West side of the North island...