Counting Sheep

After waking up and feeling somewhat disappointed with my surroundings I am happy to report a pleasant change of scenery. We got out of Auckland around noon catching a flight to Christchurch (south island). The flight was just a little over an hour with practically every seat taken. The flight was standard but one sweet practice at least at New Zealand Air is just prior to landing the flight attendants select a couple kids to hand out lollies (hard candies). This was done on our flight yesterday from Rarotonga when two adorable little girls around the ages of 9 or 10 were selected. I figured the flight attendants looked for a couple sweet looking little kids to distribute the hard candies but on today's flight 2 or 3 teenaged boys who looked like they might be returning to a juvenile detention home handed out the lollies. We arrived into Christchurch around 1:30 and picked up a rental car and got my cellphone outfitted with a SIM card making it possible to send and receive calls over the next 10 days. The woman at the mobile phone center at the airport was outstanding and the phone is working just great. I can place a call to a US LAN line for less than $2 for up to an hour so I will be calling the States at least once per day. We picked up our rental car a Ford of some sort with the steering wheel on the right of course and John made the almost three hour drive to Kaikoura. We lost count of the number of sheep and the number of vineyards we passed along the way...lots and lots of sheep. We've settled into our B&B after meeting the owners Sophie (French) and Ian (Kiwi/New Zealander) and their friendly dog. Then we went into town to book dolphin and whale watching outings for tomorrow morning. John really wants to swim with the dolphins but all the spaces are spoken for so he's on a waiting list. We have dolphin watching at 8:30 and whale watching at 3:00 tomorrow. After booking our outings we went out for a delicious dinner at an organic restaurant called Hislops. It's about 10:00 Tuesday night in Kaikoura so I need to say good night to you if I'm going to get up in time for breakfast and dolphins. I've added a couple photos taken in Aitutaki to previous blog post.