Our next accommodation was nice.  We had small houses in the mountains.  We went to the hot springs and dinner.  Then on to Akaroa.  We were supposed to go to Kaikoura which is famous for dolphin and whale watching.  But because of the recent earthquake we were not able to go there.  Three of us went on a dolphin watching cruise in Akaroa and the rest wandered around the town.  It was a warm sunny day and we saw lots of Hectors dolphin.  I had never seen them before.  They are tiny.  I didn’t get any pictures of them so the picture I’m putting in is from the internet.  We saw little penguins swimming and fur seals.  We saw lots of birds and one sheep (not swimming).  The boat was a family run business, small group of people and the boat staff was wonderful.  They also had a dolphin dog.  He ran around with his little life jacket on.  He can hear the dolphin so he would run to the side of the boat where they were long before we could see them.  After Akaroa, we went to Christchurch.  Christchurch was nothing too exciting.  A bunch of us went to the botanic gardens (free) and then wandered around downtown.  Christchurch is still rebuilding from the earthquake years ago.  It feels like a ghost town.  Most buildings are abandoned and there were hardly any people around.  There’s a bunch of Burner type art and murals around town.  My favorite mural was one of penguins.  On the left the penguins looked normal, but then toward the right, the penguins were melting.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore