Day 12: Kaikouri to Christchurch

We stopped off at lookout point above the town before we left this morning. There was still quite a bit of cloud on the top of the mountain but you could just see the ocassional snowy peak

The road to Christchurch heads along the coast which means it's pretty windy but the views are great. We stopped briefly at one point to watch a school of dolphins playing in the bay. They were great and so close to the shore I think we got a better view than the dolphin tour boats which we could see further out

Dan sorted our accommodation en-route so we had a good central hotel sorted by the time we arrived. Christchurch even laid on a nice welcoming committee for us as we unloaded at the hotel - 2 policemen escorting a rather angry drunk (crying out expletives even we hadn't heard before) down the street and then restraining him on the floor as he continued to swear and curse quite impressively

Still this was more than made up for when Dan won a toss up with the reception staff and scored us free breakfast every morning for the duration of our stay

We had a good explore of the city in the afternoon and then made our way to a pub called dux de lux. It has about 15 entries in the guidebooks so we felt duty bound check it out. Had some nice mussels and some of the beer that they brew inside in their own micro brewery.
We stayed for their comedy night which was interesting. Some of the local acts were predictably a bit "uneven" but the national acts were really good

Tomorrow we're going over the top in the alps.