More great scenery...

Hi all,

After Dunedin we made a tiring 6hour drive north on the eastern coast and ended up in Akaroa which is a nice peninsula town about 1.5 hours from Christchurch. We liked Akaroa so much we decided to stay for 3 nights. After that we drove through Christchurch to a gorgeous town called Kaikora. The scenery is amazing here because you get snow capped mountains and ocean all in one view. We're about to leave Kaikora and drive a little inland to a placed called Hamner Springs. It's probably going to be our last stop before heading into Christchurch and starting Phase 2 of this grand scheme.

Dolphins..
My list of things to do before I die (see last post) has taken a beating these past couple of weeks. While in Akaroa, Gay and I were able to swim with dolphins! First off, it isn't exactly how I pictured it. I thought it was going to be dolphins swimming around you and playing with you. Maybe even butting you with their little snouts. This trip was a bit different. About 15 of us piled into a pretty big boat and set off for open water. Once we found a big pod of dolphins going in one direction, we would pass them and then they lowered the ladder and we jumped in. I don't know if you ever dropped yourself in open water, no where near shore, with nothing but a snorkel and a wet suit; but it scared the hell out of me. After I calmed myself down I waited for the dolphins to come and hangout. They didn't care they just swam right passed. We got back in the boat and headed up further and prepared to get back in. This time one of the guides came up to discreetly, handed me two little rocks and said.."hey mate, click these 2 rocks together, they really like that." wink. So I jumped in and now I was clicking rocks together, which, in a way was scaring me even more. Who knows what other animal is going to respond to clicks? On about the third try we got in with some dolphins and I was brave enough to click the rocks loud and continually. Finally one of the little guys broke from the pack and came right over to me. I dunked my head under and we looked at each other, he came within arms length of me, decided I was just some fool clicking rocks and swam off. All in all I have to say it was awesome when I actually got that close to the dolphin. Good experience, unfortunately I was the only one on the boat who got that experience as I was the only one with the rocks.

Almost over..
We'll our traveling part of this little adventure is almost over. We have one more stop and then we're going to check out Christchurch and see what we can do over there. I have mixed feelings, I'm curious and excited to see what's going to happen and I'm going to be happy not living out of a bag anymore. On the otherhand the freedom of traveling with no time constraint has been liberating and relaxing. We spent some rainy days in hostels not doing anything but reading, watching movies or playing puzzles. That also is going to come to an end. But there will sure be more stuff to blog about, which I'm sure Les will appreciate.

Pictures (and hopefully more video) coming soon...
-Jon