Ah, this is the way New Zealand should be seen! In 25degree heat with full sun out :)

We've taken advantage of the weather and been pretty busy the past few days.

From Christchurch, we went to Kaikoura with the idea of staying two nights there, however, it slightly disappointed us so we ended up staying only the one night. The highlight was the seafood. The town is crazy for Crayfish! So oBviously I had to be part of it and bought myself a whole crayfish, freshly caught locally that morning. I followed a simple but tasty recipe - lemon, olive oil & cracked pepper. What a beaut! Bit of salad on the side and there I had one of the healthiest dinners I've had so far :)

Now on to the fun stuff. As the weather was looking great for today, I decided to go ahead and book the swimming with Dolphins adventure in Akaroa. Ketan didn't want to come seeing as he's already swam with dolphins elsewhere, so I was on my lonesome (first time in 2 and a half months - wierd!).

After the two hour shuttle journey from Christchurch to Akaroa, I immediately felt the charm and warmth from the small town harbour. It has a very 'French' feel to it, even the road names begin with 'Rue de le' blah blah.. The cafes all had French names etc, you get the jist.

So - the dolphin swim. Well, firstly, I had to get into a vvvvery tight wetsuit. I was a wetsuit-virgin and had been warned that they aren't meant to be comfortable or look good - yes and yes. Still, after much stretching and jumping around I was successfully sucked in, as the photos will prove. We were told on the boat by our skipper, Andrew, how to spot the Hector's dolphins as they had a small black fin which pokes out of the water. We spotted a few about 10 minutes out of the harbour and therefore all got into the water. FREEZING. The wetsuits are supposed to provide warm! But we got used to the cold after half an hour. The swim was awesome. The dolphins were so playful, they'd come within a metre of you swimming around and poking out, blowing water through their blowhole. In total, we were told there were 13 dolphins in the space of 45mins we were in the water - amazing! Hector's dolphins are the smallest and rarest dolphins in the world, so it was pretty special being surrounded by them. They were so cute and small! I don't have any photos of me in the water with dolphins but I tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to snap photos of my own once back in the boat, as you'll see.

It's quite a surreal feeling to think we only have two more days in New Zealand. We are using Christchurch as a base for our last week here, so I've uploaded some random photos of the town on Flickr too. Tomorrow we're going on a days' wine-tasting tour - oh yeah ;-) Hope you're all well at home! Keep reading x