REPLIES

Hi guys,

First of all, Sylvia forgot to add in that we will be arriving at 10.45 a.m. on the 24th.

Regarding the first part of the trip,we found some information on what are interesting and we can probably do at those places.

For Kaikoura on the 26th May,
If you guys want to swim with the dolphins, we don't mind staying on the boat to watch cos there's no life-jackets, right? We found out that it costs $115 to swim, $60 to watch. Haha, it's cheaper than whale-watching. But we got the prices from guide book, so we still have to check when we are there..?

At Picton on 28th May,
We found some things we could do. We can go sea-kayaking which costs $95-$110 for a day of guided trip (taken from book, might differ for different companies). Here's a list of websites you guys can visit and decide which one to go for: http://www.adventureguidesnz.com , http://www.marlboroughsounds.com , http://www.nzseakayaking.com . We can also go for the sea safaris. Can check out the available activities at http://www.seasafaris.co.nz . We found out some stuffs from the website such as the discovery and the wildlife tour that costs $70 per person and the shark cage dive which is quite cool but i tink we need a min of 6 person so dunno if it will work out. Its $98 per person. Can read more about it from the website.

On the 29th May at Blenheim,
Besides going to the wine tours, we can also do river trips from $40. The website to check out is http://www.riverqueencruise.com . Its a trip along the Opawa river on board a paddle boat consisting of a 2 hour lunch and dinner with a glass of wine.

On the 30th and 31st May at the Hanmer Springs,
Beside the hot springs, we can also go horse trekking. Go check out http://www.hanmerhorses.co.nz . There is a 1 hour to full day rides starting from $40. Alternatively, we can go rafting which is a half day to multi-day trip starting from $89 at the Waiau, Hurunui and Clarence rivers. We went to visit the springs website and looked through the spa charges and felt that its not very worth it so can give it a miss but we can go back for another dip the next day if its good. =)

As for the Lady Karen boat stay, we don't mind catering our food if we're not spending much the other days on food. So we can just relax. But up to you guys. We're okie with anything. We also don't mind doing this boat stay instead of that at Milford Sound. As for the walks we can do, we can go for a few but not all if they're boring unless we really dun have much to do there.

When we arrive at CC on the 24th, do we have time to unpack our unnecessary stuffs b4 we drive off to Kaikoura?

How many days are we stopping over at CC before heading south? so maybe we can plan what we want to do at CC while u're busy with ur proj.

Since its $45 for 3 days of rental of ski wear, we will just rent instead of buying. And we will take note of the extra $75 expenditure. Anyway, pet, do u know the extra cost for an extra day of skiing if we decide to stay on to ski on the 15th. Cause the cost listed on the website was quite confusing. So we can decide what we want to do. So don't worry about us, u guys can go ahead with ur plans. And we might need you to drive us back to CC so we can collect our remaining stuffs but if u can't find transport for us to the airport we can make our way there ourselves.

Hey pet, u have a cantebury factory outlet at CC is it? Are the things there cheap?

We will look through the accomodation and see if there's anything else if not we can just go along with pet's suggestions. Hopefully we can finalise out activities of the first half of trip asap.

We also did a rough estimation and realised we might exceed our budget so we have to consider carefully what we want to do exactly.

As for the second half of the trip, maybe pet can come up with a rough guide as to where exactly we are going to stop over and how many days so we can go look up for some activities we can do and keep u guys posted.

Pet, do let us know what u need then we can go shop for things within these few days.