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Published: January 13th 2008
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Sunday 13th Jan 08
Happy Birthday Mom for tomorrow 14 1 08, we all hope you have a really great day !!!
Friday 11 1 08
Our trip has continued to be better than great, Friday we left Christchurch again to head north to Hanmer Springs to celebrate Jane’s birthday.
We stayed in a nice very modern house just outside the town. Hanmer is famous ( In NZ anyway ! ) for having natural thermal springs, the water comes out of the ground at 40 degrees & is full of minerals that are good for body & mind. All it did for me was clear the nostrils with the smell of rotten eggs !!
The kids had a great time splashing about from one pool to another & on the water slides.
Saturday 12 1 08
We all had a wonder around the small town of Hanmer Springs to start the day off before Oscar & I went off to do boy things !! You know the sort of thing, boy things have to have an engine to be proper boy things !!
Oscar was too young to be let loose on a quad so we went for
the off road buggie ! This was something like I am building back home. We were the only buggie drivers so we joined a crowd of quad bikers & went off into the NZ out back.
Im not sure what engine it had in it but it was happily out running 350cc quads across a dried up river bed. We set off on our trip, along a single track following each other a little on the sedate side for the first 5 mins then the guide decided everyone had got the hang of things so we were let loose. He would hurtle off along the track for a mile or so then stop & wait for everyone to catch up, then go again & wait for us to catch up.
Oscar & I were getting a little annoyed because we had to keep slowing down because we were catching the quads all the time, we were promoted to the front to be the first thing behind the guide, he said we would not manage to keep up with him so we would not have a problem. How wrong could he be ?? We gave him about a 50m head start
along a nice twisty mile long section, much to his amazement we were nudging the back of hios quad at about half way. ( He should not of looked so condescending when he said we would not be able to keep up )
The guide stopped us all at the edge of a river about a foot deep & 20’ wide, he said he would go the other side & take photos of everyone as they came through. Oscar & I discussed the river crossing, was it to be nice & gentle or flat out. Very quickly we decided flat out was the only way to do things, as I mentioned this buggie had quite a turn of speed, we took about a 60m run up to the edge of the river. I would of put the photo on the blogg but there would have been no point as all you could see was spray, as we hit the water it was like driving head first into a dam, the buggie nearly stopped dead, true to form we just kept the pedal to the metal as they say & went through, we could not of been any wetter if
we had jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed. We did a few more river crossings during our 2 hours playing but Oscar made me go slowly through the water but flat out on dry land. As you can possibly tell we had a great afternoon.
Sunday 13 1 08
We got up early & headed off further North to the coast @ Kiakoura to go whale watching. Megan came with us as she likes Kiakoura.
We got there & went straight to book in for the cruise boat to go & see the sperm whales. It was only 11am & they could not fit us in until 3pm. We booked but luckily did not have to pay up front.
We had about 4 hours to kill so we went & had a look around the town, had some lunch etc.
The kids & Jane went down onto the beach to sit down, I headed off to have a look at a helicopter sat by the beach, after a quick bit of negotiation I had sorted us out a 40 minute helicopter flight out to see the whales, dolphins & seals.
I went back down to the beach
& told Jane, she was up for it, we told the kids,…………. None of them wanted to do it, they all wanted to go on the boat !!??!! To say we were speechless was an understatement !
Jane worked her magic powers of persuasion ( I know how good they are she does it to me in shops !! ) & we were soon all climbing into our nice shiny blue helicopter.
We had a great time, Jessica was not very keen to start off with but she soon came round.
We saw a sperm whale for quite a while lay on top of the water for us, then he headed down to the depths, we saw a pod of about 200 dolphins & seals sat on the rocks getting a tan.
The pilot took us for a fly around the peninsular pointing out various things of interest. Being such a wuus with heights I was not sure how I would fair in a helicopter sat with nothing but glass in front of me but it was really good well worth a go if you get a chance. It did bring my heart into my mouth the first time he
threw it on its side to loose height though.
Oh well that’s about it for now. We are off shopping in Christchurch tomorrow ( Oh what fun ) then on Tuesday we are flying up to north island for a week. I will update if I can from there.
See you all soon
The Kendalls
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