I had a nice surprise the next morning in my hostel in Kaikoura: it turns out they do free breakfast, but because I had checked in after hours, nobody had told me about it! I heard from someone in my dorm, and went for it. It was generous and tasty - even homebaked bread - and I met some interesting people over the breakfast table, including two Japanese girls who I wowed with my extensive mastery of their language (yes, I managed to remember how to say 'What is your name?').

Then the bus took me to Picton ferry terminal, thence back to Wellington. The crossing was a good deal rougher than before. Bracing wind and oily seas made for a wet time on deck. But it was nice. Interestingly, the fjords we sailed out of were much less impressive than they had been on arrival. The much bigger fjords of Southland are to blame for that.

Back in Wellington, I made my way to Bernard & Amanda's house and soon we were stuck in to the booze again. It was as if I had never left! A meal with Bernard's rellies who were up visiting their daughter (his cousin) was followed by drinks with work colleagues. All good.

On Saturday we had a lazy morning (for a change!) and went to the City Museum. There was a harrowing video presentation of the 1965 sinking of a Wellington - Christchurch ferry. I was quite unsettled after it, and writing about it now has brought the images of piles of dead bodies and distraught survivors flooding back into my head. Luckily, there was a lighter moment in the museum too: they've gone and displayed the Union Jack the wrong way round, and right next to a bust of Queen Victoria!

The rest of the time in Wellington is a bit of a haze of beer, wine, food, DVDs, drizzle and deep sleep in the spare bed. I'm beginning to think it wasn't jetlag that stopped me from getting up before eleven when I first got to NZ; more likely it's the spare bed that casts a spell over any who sleep in it!

And so, finally, I had to say goodbye to Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. And hello to a sore arse on 28 hours' worth of sitting in planes via Sydney and Singapore to London Heathrow.

When I arrived in Kaikoura, the weather was even worse than I left it in Christchurch. A persistent heavy drizzle made the walk out to my guesthouse particularly unpleasant. But once again I was struck by the friendliness of Kiwis: a drunken youth happily started chatting to me in the rain as we walked up the same road. I thought at first that maybe he was the decoy for a mugging (it happened to me like that in Rio, after all) but then I realised he was just a nice guy.

I dropped my bags in the room and headed out to find some food. But alas! This was eight o'clock small-town NZ and almost everything was shut. Luckily I found a cosy cafe/restaurant that was still serving food and I had some delicious mussels before curling up on their sofa and reading my book.

The next day I woke up early, fought my way through the continuing rain to a breakfast place, then dragged my wet & weary bones to the offices of Dolphin Encounter, only to discover that the tour I had booked the previous day was cancelled owing to shite conditions at sea! Thoroughly fed up, I trudged back home through the whistling torrential deluge and went straight back to bed.

When I woke up, I was transported to a world of glistening sunshine. Somehow, a triangle of sky over Kaikoura was free of the rainclouds that loomed menacingly all around. This unexpected delight was tempered somewhat by the discovery of not one, not two, but three fucking bedbugs crawling towards my pillow. And yes, they had already supped on someone, as evidenced by the huge crimson splats that were their epitaph.

I went and had a word with the proprietor, who promptly tried to pin the blame for their appearance on me! According to him, my Christchurch hostel was famous for its infestations. So I put my sleeping bag out in the sun - even though I hadn't used it that night - and acquiesced when his only proposed remedy was to move me to another room. He didn't bother to move the other guy in the bunk below me, though, tchuh!

I soon forgot the bedbug incident; it seems I wasn't their victim after all as I don't have any tell-tale straight lines of bites anywhere. I decided to make the most of the good weather and walk an hour south to a seal colony. All the way there, a beautiful big fat rainbow was hanging before me, so close I could almost touch it. It spurred me on through the blustery winds until I reached the end of the road and the colony.

There were seals everywhere! If it had been breeding season, I'm sure I could have clubbed me a sumptuous white fur coat in no time at all. As it was, only juvenile males were to be seen lounging on the rocks. It was special. Particularly when I went to take a photo of one, got a bit too close, it hooted at me, I backed off and wheeled round it back offshore, only to have five of the buggers honk at me because I was so busy picking my way across the slippery rocks that I didn't notice I was walking right into a big gaggle of them!

I climbed to the top of the cliffs and nearly got blown over by the gale-force winds. The huge herd of cows in the next-door field didn't look too comfortable up at the edge either. But the view was spectacular. The tide was going out, exposing more and more of the rock shelf that serves as the seals' playground here. Thousands of gulls whirled and flocked around the seals, and there were indigenous wading birds too with long bright red beaks and legs that looked too long. Low clouds were being whisked along in the stiff breeze, and from the entrance to one valley there was a continuous stream of mist being blown out to sea. Invigorating. Intoxicating. I felt - literally - on top of the world.

I walked slowly back towards town, dawdling at the rock pools and runnels of water leaking out of the pebble and sand beach. The sun was getting lower, and there was a definite chill in the air which was heightened by the fact that now I was walking into the wind. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of snow-capped mountains behind a bank of raincloud to the north. Now that was a surprise! The Kaikoura mountains, I later discovered, are NZ's fastest-growing range and among the most-photographed too. I guess a lot of people come when you can actually see them.

When I reached town, I treated myself to a luxury dinner of mussel chowder, crayfish (the local delicacy: Kai-koura is Maori for "Food-crayfish") and a bottle of local sauvignon blanc. Okay, and an obscenely tasty slab of passionfruit cheesecake on a berry coulis. But no coffee - see, I can be good! Then I wrote some merry emails and retired for the night.

My last day in Dunedin proved to be cool as well. After a lazy brunch at a nearby cafe, Stu went to work and Suki drove me out to the beach. Dunedin looks like St Tropez! There's so much golden sand. But okay, the water is a bit on the nippy side.

The best beach was Tunnel Beach, which is a completely secluded little beach outside town. You can only reach it by a steep path through private land, and then a tiny narrow tunnel with steps hewn out of the rock. I felt as though I was descending into a pyramid, and the steps got slipperier and slimier as we went down. But by jove it was worth it! A delightful little hideaway, and almost no-one there. And as an extra bonus, you can climb up on top of a big promontory which is grassed over and is ideal for a picnic, and sit watching huge waves crash through the surge tunnel right beneath you! Or just lie back and let the sun toast the bits of you that aren't hidden by thermal undies.

After a spot of fish & chips (it must have been the tangy sea air that made us both crave fish) back home with Stu, Suki drove me to the bus station with seconds to spare. Then I had a long, uneventful drive up to Christchurch.

Christchurch may be the South Island's major city, but I have to say there's not a lot there. It's pretty enough, but outside the tiny city centre, with the cathedral, the art gallery, the museum and a handful of historic buildings, it fades almost straight away into suburbia. That said, the gallery was very good, built only a year ago in true modern art gallery styling (for a minute I thought it was an airport, there was so much glass and steel everywhere).

I made the best of it by joining a walking tour of the town, headed by a very prim middle-aged woman who seemed to take exception to my criticisms of the concrete monstrosities that have been built all around the cathedral. I mean, she should be on my side! But it seems the concrete is as much part of her cherished heritage as the nice bits left from the earlier period of colonisation. Also on the tour was a lovely German couple, Dirk & Diana, who I went for drinks and a bite to eat with after we had finished the tour.

I spent one day on the TranzAlpine train across the spine of the country to Greymouth on the west coast. This is billed as one of the world's great train journeys, but I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed. Perhaps I've just been spoiled by going through the "proper" Alps in trains in Switzerland, but the Southern Alps left me cold. This could also be due to the cloudy, drizzly conditions and a lack of much snow.

On the plus side, I got to chat with a group of Australian psychiatrists who were over for a conference and, like me, had a day to kill. They were cheeky though! In their nasal Aussie accents they had the nerve to take the piss out of the Kiwi accent, by recounting a tale of being given directions to "go to the end of the street and take a lift" - which of course meant "left" but Kiwis do talk like that.

The next day decided to head out to the small port town of Akaroa, on the peninsula to the southeast of Christchurch. I was told it was only worth doing on a nice day, but I thought I'd take a chance with the weather clearing up. It didn't really, but as it happens I wasn't at all disappointed.

Akaroa is the only ethnic French settlement in New Zealand. Some French whalers liked it so much, they sailed home to get their families. When they got back, they discovered that only weeks before the whole island had been claimed for Britain. Bugger! But they settled anyway, and today the town has French street names and French shops and stuff.

The town is delightful. Like a marble at rest, it lies in centre of a bowl of land formed by a ring of mountains, but it has access to the sea via a long twisty fjord that heads north and then east out into the Pacific. The water was placid and blue despite the overcast skies. Aside from the restaurants and boutiquey shops, there are many holiday homes here, and I could feel the attraction of a mini Biarritz less than two hours' drive from Christchurch.

The best view of the town, we were told, can be seen from the main road where it climbs over the rim of the bowl and starts to descend. Today, however, there was so much low cloud in the hills that we saw nothing but a billy-goat from that particular viewpoint. I managed to make my own great views by following a marked two-hour walk in the foothills behind the town that took me through patches of indigenous beech forest and past people working in their gardens (The Monkees' Pleasant Valley Sunday sprang to mind).

The bus ride back to Christchurch was made entertaining by the conversation I had with an Irish girl who has been working in NZ for a year and an elderly American who was just visiting. He had some strident views against Bush and againts many US stances, which was refreshing.

In the evening, I took another bus, this time heading north to Kaikoura.