New Zealand Wonderful!

Our short 2 ½ hour flight to Christchurch was uneventful, and we arrived to see a city, sadly, still in ruins.  Well, not the entire city but the earthquakes of a few years back that racked the inner city have that part of town completely sealed off and in various stages of reconstruction.  We didn’t get to see much, only some of the homes and churches on the outskirts that were destroyed.

Sleepy Seal in Kaikora

View from our B&B

Bright and early Monday morning we meet our group and guides.  There are 12 of us and 2 guides and we are a diverse and fun group.  We will have rain today so we begin our drive heading up north (on the South Island) to Kaikoura.  We take a short one hour hike  around Peninsula Walkway Trail and then land at our guest house, a darling place with fabulous views of the mountains (so they say, it was very rainy and cloudy by then).  We had a lovely meal cooked by our hosts and settled in for the night.  Some of our fellow travellers arrived only this morning from Israel and New York!  They are tired but good sports…

It rained all night and the next day…continuously.  We are going to separate into two groups tomorrow, one backpacking and one biking.  I am not the best backpacker in the world, and with a large pack and torrential rains, I just didn’t think I could do it, so we joined the bikers.  Bill actually enjoys biking more and we get to stay in a real B&B not a hut with 20 strangers.  I think we will be happier.  Before we separate however, we have a wine tasting at a lovely winery named Forrest, in the Marlborough region.  Needless to say, we loved the sauvignon blanc (tIN NZ they call it sav blanc!)

Our guides give us an option of cycling a few hours in the afternoon amidst poring rain on a wet and dangerous track, or relaxing in the hot tub and a nap.  What do you think the Fetsches did?