Well, here I am in Auckland. Alone. I checked into my hostel and walked around a bunch, then found an internet cafe to waste some time in. I'm just not sure what I should be doing?? I miss Jeremy!!

So, I'm going to write about our trip while it's still fresh in my mind...

Dec 21st - arrived in Christchurch in the middle of the night and got a good sleep in our teeny tiny hotel room. We stayed at a place called Hotel So and the room we were in was called "So Snug". Basically it's a bed and a bathroom. It was quite cozy. We were hoping to take a gondola ride and bought tickets, but it was insanely windy and the gondolas were cancelled. Instead, we hopped on a tram tour and also went punting (rode on a boat while a guy paddled from the back). We decided a trip to the beach would be a good idea, so we braved the city buses and went to Brighton Beach. Christchurch is odd - no one wants to live near the beach for some reason...the property prices actually decrease as you enter that area!! Strange. Had a swim - the water was really cold, but it was hot and windy out, so we dried off quickly. On the way back, the bus had trouble with the brakes, so we had to pull over and wait for another one...argh!!

Dec 22 - Rental car company came and picked us up from our hotel in the morning. We headed off to get our car - a "Sunny". Loaded 'er up and we were off! Our first stretch was Christchurch to Oamaru. Oamaru isn't that exciting...it's known for historic architecture and penguins. We walked around and looked and buildings and stuff before going back to our campsite. We saw a dead seagull hanging from power lines...yuck. At the campsite, the peace and quiet was broken around 9 pm by someone vomiting incredibly loudly and disgustingly across the site. Jeremy and I for some reason thought it was pretty funny, so we were the jerks laughing at the person throwing up. Whoops. We had a freeeeeeeezing cold sleep that night (hadn't perfected the art of strategic blanket placement yet).

Dec 23 - Oamaru to Dunedin. Dunedin was my favourite city on the South Island. It's so picturesque and quaint. I can't emphasize enough how strong the wind was!!! We went to the steepest street in the world and drove up it. Jeremy had a little adrenaline rush when the pedal was all the way to the floor near the top of the street and our poor little car was struggling, but it made it! Jeremy swam and apparently the waves were excellent for body surfing. I couldn't force myself in...it was freezing!! We got back to our tent (which we were surprised to find still standing since the wind was so strong) and there was a photographer from the newspaper there. He took our picture for the paper, because we were crazy enough to be tent camping in that wind! We walked into the middle of the city along ther harbour, which should have been pleasant, but I was lucky enough to get a bad cold right at the beginning of our trip and I wasn't doing too well. We stopped in a bar and had a good chat with the bartender (we were the only ones there). We had managed to go on Tradie's Day, the day when all the trade workers start their holidays. There was some definite holiday cheer on the streets. Jeremy and I were walking and we saw a pretty funny procession - a crowd of drunk tradies, followed by two cops, and at the end of the line was a drunk Santa who shouted curses at us for some unknown reason!

Okay...enough for now!