After surfacing around 10ish we had a great brunch at The Chocolate Fish Cafe, on the sea-front, consisting of a full-english and a chocolate fish (I kid you not!) We also bought a piece of artwork by a local artist for about 25 quid. Bargain! It was decided we were going to go for a tramp (local term for a walk over bush-land, not an attack on a vagrant) around the Mirarmar Peninsula, and we did - some 10 kms of it, up and down o'er hill and vale. It was excellent and there were many great viewpoints of Wellington, the harbour and the Cook Straight. In the evening we visited a Mongolian BBQ (called, rather unimaginatively 'Genghis Khan', one highlight of the evening was ringing them up to book a table and asking 'Hi, is that Genghis Khan', kind of hoped there'd be some bloke grunting on the other end 'Yes, it's me, could you hold on a minute I'm just raping and pillaging...') and gorged ourselves. We finished off a couple of bottles of wine, more in commiseration really as we lost comprehensively - 3-1 - to Richard and Sally at pool earlier in the night. With all of us feeling knackered, and Sally suffering from a nasty cold we headed back and had an early night.

We bade farewell before we went to bed, and sneaked out around 7.30am in order to catch the ferry to the South Island. Richard and Sally have been really kind, putting up with us for a couple fo days and taking time out to show us the area, so we hope to be able to repay the favour one day.

The South Island is much more mountainous than the north, and is home to most of the ski-fields. As soon as you start the drive south from Picton you can see the snow-covered peaks of the Kaikoura Range in the background. It is breathtaking. We've now arrived in Christchurch - about 350 kms south of Picton where we are 'picking up' Jen's parents tomorow morning - not sure what's planned for the next few days...