New Zealand is lovely!

My first few days in New Zealand have been awesome! I'm doing a tour of New Zealand on the Magic bus. It's a hop on hop off bus that follows a route, and you can choose to just stay on the route and complete the tour of New Zealand or can get off at any of the towns along the way and stay for as many days as you like. There are mandatory overnight stops in certain cities, and if you were to stay on the route the whole time, only staying the nights in the mandatory places, it would take you 14 days to do the whole tour. My plan is to stay pretty much on the route, but take a few extra days here and there. The nice thing about Magic Bus is they will book your hostels and activites for you, so it's really easy to travel. When you get in the bus in the morning, they pass around a sheet and you sign up for what you want to do and where you want to stay, and the driver books it for you.

So, Friday morning, we left Christchurch and headed for Kaikoura, which is north of Christchurch, and along the coast. The drive was very pretty, with lots of hills that go right up to the edge of the ocean. The drive was just under 4 hours, so we arrived in Kaikoura around noon. Kaikoura is beautiful, and I took some great pictures outside the hostel with the ocean in front and snowy mountains behind. That afternoon, I went whale watching. We ended up seeing two Sperm Whales, but they both surfaced multiple times, so we had a total of five whale sightings. The whales come to the surface to breathe, and spend about 5 minutes on the surface, and then go back down. When they go back down, they flip their tails up, which was really cool (although my camera is not fast enough so I didn't get too many good pictures, most of the pictures just show the edge of the tail as it is entering the water). The views from the boat were awesome too, and the weather was great, so it was a wonderful afternoon. I had fish and chips for dinner, because Kaikoura is known for having some of the best fish and chips in New Zealand, and it was very very good (although instead of chips I had potato wedges, but they were really good).

This morning, Saturday, we left Kairkoura and headed toward Picton, which is on the very north part of the South island. We stopped along the way at a seal colony (there were several babies, and they were really cute) and we also stopped at a winery for wine tasting. We stopped at the Montana Winery, which is the biggest winery in New Zealand, and tried several wines. Then we continued to Picton, where many people on the bus got off. Picton is where you catch the ferry to the north island, and some were doing that. There were also some that came on the ferry to the south island, so we got a bunch of new people on the bus. I will be taking the ferry in about a week, so I'll be back to Picton then. We had a break in Picton, so I wandered around a bit. It's a small town, but the weather was sunny and warm, and the harbor area was very pretty, so it was fun. I also was on the lookout for a new pair of sunglasses, since I discovered that morning that mine broke, but I didn't find any I liked. We then continued on to Nelson, which is where I'm staying the night. Nelson is another small town (I think the majority of the cities in New Zealand are small, as I was told that there are only 2 million people in the whole country). I walked around Nelson a bit, and saw the Christ Church Cathedral, which is in the center of town.

The weather here has been great so far, it's been sunny and warm. I was prepared for colder weather, and thought it would be colder than Melbourne, but it hasn't been so far. However, I heard the weather report today was calling for rain tomorrow, but hopefully it will stay nice!