Day 3 in New Zealand: Sha's birthday

Hey ... I'm engaged. I've now been with Sha for exactly 1 year!! We celebrated today by having a house inspection for termites and then having dinner in the revolving restaurant on the top of the Sydney tower.

Day 3 in New Zealand was Sha's birthday! She's now approximately 22 years old (as she has been for a few birthdays now). We set out early in the morning to try and find some breakfast in Westport. We did. The bacon was about the size of a gammon steak. Feeling rather full we headed off to try and find the ocean. This shouldn't have been too hard as Westport is a port on the sea, but Sha was navigating and so we got lost. We ended up on a quiet dirt road which allowed Sha to have a go driving until we stopped next to a field to have a photograph with a large dog called Yeti ("because he has 7 toes").

Finally we found the ocean and drove down to the end of the pier. After a rather nerve wracking 100-point turn to face the other direction we headed back toward the mountains. We hoped that the Lewis Pass through the mountains would be open!

The drive started through the Buller Gorge: "Scene of earthquakes, floods and home to hundreds of transient workers during goldmining times, the gorge has been a challenge to horsemen, coach drivers, roadmakers and bridge builders". It's certainly fun to drive along!

Then we started getting back into the high snow-capped mountains. But the road was clear! Although it did start snowing for a little while.

After a very long drive through the mountains and with the weather starting to look rather dramatic we pulled up in Hamner Springs for lunch. Another hour or so of driving got us to the other side of the country and we ran onto a beach on the Pacific coast!! Then we got completely lost in the one-way streets in Christchurch. We ended up by accident at a hotel and found that we couldn't do a U-turn and so simply stayed there for the night. It was a great hotel!! We were on the 23rd floor and had a huge window sill which we sat on eating Sha's birthday cake and watching the great views!