It's All Roses and Golf Greens

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Blenheim currently has the title for the sunniest city in New Zealand. We enjoyed its warm days in its beautiful parks and taking to the golf greens. Fall colors and cool nights are starting to make their appearance just in time for Easter too.

An interesting Easter tradition here involves a hunt, but not for colored eggs or chocolate, actually, a hunt for live rabbits! We thankfully had heard of this prior to waking up on Good Friday to the sounds of shot guns both near and in the distance. We had parked just outside Blenheim across from the land designated for the big event! The hunt takes place in a specific area full of rabbits, and the goal is to get as many of them as possible in a time period... just like hunting for chocolate eggs I suppose, but taken to a different level.

We began our move South toward Kaikoura and arrived on Easter Sunday. Kaikoura is a town of about 3500 people on the coast, famous for its colonies of small Hector dolphins. You can swim with dolphins or seals not far off shore (for a price!). Here, we also spent our first night in a hostel - it was fantastic.

We had popped in to about four other hostels, all of which were chock full, and then stumbled across Bad Jelly Backpackers. The place was named after a children's book about good overcoming a witch named Bad Jelly (I read the book), and other than a few kitsch stickers, we found no witches. It was exciting to have a comfy bed to sprawl across, meet other travellers, and take advantage of its free laundry, hot showers, and even fresh bread come morning.

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Photos

Smelling the Roses
A beautiful park in Blenheim with rose gardens, ponds, and many hungry ducks to feed.

From Up Above
Some web footed friends in the park

Beautiful Blenheim
The colors of fall are starting to show too

Kirby Hits the Links
A nice course on a warm fall day, what a nice way to spend an afternoon, and of course with a nice caddy named Christina... well, perhaps photographer would be a more accurate title.

At Least the Ball Went Further Than the Club Head...
The club didn't survive this wonderful shot... it really was a great shot! When we returned to the clubhouse, the man chuckled, "no worries, those were really old clubs". Phewf!

It's in the Cup
After a nice putt

Southern Skies
Sun setting over a vineyard by where we slept outside Blenheim. This is also the backdrop where we heard the echos of shotguns going off in their Easter Bunny Hunt...

Easter Sunday
On the road again, we stopped overnight at a nice rest stop overlooking a drought. We are fairly certain there should have been more water to overlook... We enjoyed a wholesome breakfast as sugary as hot cross buns would have been.

I Didn't Hide the Chocolate THAT Well...
Kirby takes out the seats to do a much-needed van cleaning and happens to find some easter eggs in the process... although the eggs would have been found without taking out the seats.

She Sees Seals on the Sea Shore
Just North of Kaikoura, on the East Coast, we found dozens of sun bathing seals.

Have You Seen My Ball?
This seal's pose would be perfect for a colorful beachball atop his nose

Our First Hostel
We stayed at Bad Jelly Backpackers in Kaikoura and were thoroughly impressed with its comfy beds, hot showers, free laundry, couches, hot tub, and fresh bread in the morning! Sorry Tui, we might do this more often.