Invercargil to Bay of Islands
Ok did I say Invercargil was the most southernly point on our trip around the south Island and therefore absolutley freezing! Well, the next stop was in Dunedin and again, absolutely freezing. The trip there was amazing though, as we got to see two yellow eyed penguins in the wild (there are only 3000 of these in the world!). We stopped in Dunedin for a few days, feeling it nessecary to visit both the chocolate factory and the beer tour (very important places to visit). We also went to the Peninsula via a car hire (we saw a few New Zealand seals here and visited a pretend castle).
With full bellies and a bag full of chocolate we then headed for Christchurch. Here we were lucky enough to stay with Steven and Natalie from the Isle of Man. It was so strange to talk about the island to people in New Zealand. This week was amazing because we got our respite from travelling and pretended that we lived in New Zealand. They even had two cuddly cats (well cuddly once they got to know us).
Once fully refreshed we headed back onto the coach and headed up to Kaikora. Here we hoped to go whale spotting but unfortunately the weather was wrong and the whales were heading out to sea. We did manage to go for a bike ride though, and saw a mother and baby sperm whale just off the shore.
The next day we had to say good-bye to the south island and headed for the ferry to the north. We then had a horendous 11 hour coach journey from Wellington to Auckland, (not much to say about that, pretty boring).
The next day we hired a car and headed up to the bay of islands, where we swam with dolphins (amazing) and saw the tip of new zealand (Cape reigna), the enormous Kauri trees and sat in smelly natural mineral spas.
We then returned back to Auckland, did badly in yet another pub quiz and headed off to Australia.
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