I quickly settled back into my pre-Hanmer holiday mode and spent my last few days at Amanda's mum's house relaxing and reading. These arduous activities were punctuated by visits to Mel & Paul (Mel still hasn't given birth, the poor girl) and their fabulous little daughter Monica; dinner with Jayne at a Japanese place in town; a trip with Dorothy (Amanda's mum) up the gondola to the top of the Port Hills with glorious panoramic views out over Christchurch and across to the Banks Peninsula; a spot of shopping; and a trip to the cinema (for me on my own) to see "Team America: World Police". What a hilarious film! It's from the creators of South Park, and is a wry look at the USA's involvement in world politics, using Thunderbirds-esque marionettes. It has spawned several catchphrases, among them the best new expletive I have heard for years which I will here abbreviate to J.T-F.C., and some truly memorable scenes showing aspects of life that I guarantee you've never seen from marionettes. You really have to see this film!

On Saturday I moved out of the house and into a backpackers in town. This was because Kerry & Lynley were arriving with their three little darlings that evening, and there just wasn't space for me to stay as well (Amanda & Bernard were relegated to a blow-up mattress in the living room). I spent the afternoon buying flowers and wines in an attempt to say thank you for all the kindnesses shown me over recent weeks by various members of the extended Baird family, then headed back to Amanda's mum's house for dinner with the whole clan. It was really lovely to spend some more time with all of them, especially Ella & Conor who remind me so much of my own nephews & nieces. I shall miss all these people when I'm in Australia.

I was expecting my last two full days in Christchurch to drag slowly by, but I couldn't have been more wrong. On Sunday I watched not one but two art-house movies (both German): Blueprint, a story about a concert pianist who has herself cloned lest her talent die with her, starring the incredible Franka Potente of Run, Lola, Run and The Bourne Identity fame; and Now Or Never, a film about three old ladies who have long dreamed of going on a cruiseliner together which - improbable though this sounds - was hilarious but also very sad in places. Other than that, I walked around the international food market at the Arts Centre (okay, who am I trying to kid here? I ate my way round it, of course!) and went for nice walks all around the not-quite-centre of town.

Monday was much the same: I saw another art-house movie, this time a Norwegian one called Kitchen Stories set in the 1960s and dealing with the interpersonal effects of a Swedish scientific time-and-motion study of bachelors in their homes in remote area of Norway - once again, not a promising storyline at first glance but in fact laugh-out-loud funny and desperately moving; and I went for a walk around the Christchurch museum and the Botanical Gardens. But in the evening, instead of eating alone in town I caught the bus out to visit Karl & Jennie and their two girls, Alex & Dee. It was lovely to see them again, after the great day I had spent with them the last time I was in Christchurch. Their daughters are so mature for their ages! It's hard to believe they're only 13 and 8.

And so came Tuesday, and my last day in New Zealand. I didn't feel too worried or excited to be honest. More knackered really; that could have something to do with the repeated comings & goings of people in my dorm all night, coupled with the fact that the dorm door was the squeakiest I have heard in a long long time. I had a leisurely brunch in town and then caught a bus to the airport. The flight up to Auckland was notable only for two things: fantastic views of Taranaki as we flew north past its eastern flank, and a bouncy bit of turbulence as we descended over the Waikato and into Auckland.

At Auckland I quickly met up with Gayle once more, retrieved my last bit of luggage from her office, said our fond farewells and then promptly got charged for excess baggage by Air New Zealand, the bastards! And I was only 10kg over the limit. At least the woman let me off 5kg, so I only had to pay fifty dollars, but still.

As we rose into the air in our lovely quiet Airbus, I caught a final glimpse of beautiful New Zealand, effectively my home since September, and then turned my eyes forward to my next destination.

Our destination for the New Year period was the little mountain resort town of Hanmer, about two hours north of Christchurch and due west of Kaikoura on the coast. There were to be nine of us all getting together, in two rented chalets: A&B&I as well as Malcolm & Misumi from Christchurch, plus Craig, Tye, Kirsten and Doug (Malcolm's brother) from Dunedin. The four of them were driving up in Tye's huge Ford Fairlane car - Tye likes his motors - and joining us that evening. Malcolm & Misumi weren't arriving until the next evening, so in fact it was A&B&I who arrived first and brought the house to life.

The first issue we had to tackle was the driveway: we couldn't get our car up it! It was so steep and so badly surfaced that in the end, after burning some serious rubber and creating some impressive ruts in the dirt track, we gave up and parked back down the hill on the public road - but not before unloading all our gear and the copious amounts of food & booze we had brought with us (I alone had two entries to New Zealand worth of duty free!).

Our holiday home was situated at the northern edge of town at the foot of Conical Hill, the site of Hanmer's most popular walking track. The house itself was cosy, with two bedrooms downstairs off the large living area, a mezzanine bedroom above, a small kitchen off the living room to the back, and a bathroom off the kitchen. There was a narrow balcony all round the house and a large garage below which contained mostly firewood. The furnishings were a little 'tired', shall we say, but hey it's holiday rental accommodation so it didn't really matter. It was decided that I would share one of the downstairs bedrooms with Craig, Bernard & Amanda would be in the other downstairs room and Tye & Kirsten could have the mezzanine. The others were in a separate house ten minutes' walk away further into town.

As soon as we had put the food in the fridge, the vodkas in the freezer and the beers in a chilly bin (that's what they call cooler boxes here) with ice, we settled down to a nice glass of wine and began to slow our mental metabolisms down to holiday speed - admittedly not much of a step-change after a very relaxing week at Amanda's mum's house, but still qualitatively different because this really was a holiday resort. Soon the Dunedin crew arrived and then the party got going in style. We calculated that between us we had brought a total of four litres of pure ethanol (variously thinned down in spirits, liqueurs, wines and beers) for the five day duration of our stay. The duty free was everywhere; Doug works in the oil industry, and is forever flying back and forth from NZ, not to mention my own efforts. And we made an impressive dent in that ethanol total just on the first night!

The rest of our time in Hanmer was really a variation on that theme. We would generally have good lie-ins, followed by a lazy breakfast. Then during the day people would either read, go for walks or just sit & chat. Evening meals were either cooked in (Kirsten doing stirling work with her Vietnamese speciality fresh spring rolls and other delicacies) or we went out for food. And there would be more or less alcohol consumption as the evening wore on. It reminded me strongly of my summer holidays as a child in Austria - all that was missing was gossip about the village people (although there was a fair amount of gossip about other people anyway!).

As you can imagine, New Year's Eve was another biiiiig night. We started on the g&t's at about 3 o'clock and went on from there. Music was provided courtesy of my iRiver plugged into Tye's laptop which in turn was hooked into the chalet's shite TV using a cable Kirsten had brought with (the chalet's shite stereo was too old to have appropriate sockets). Craig & Tye had brought fireworks and these went off after midnight to see in 2005. Then Tye & I wandered into town to see whether much was going on there. As expected, it wasn't too rambunctious - back in Christchurch we had read in the paper that Hanmer was such a family-oriented destination that the police weren't going to bother being there - but there were still some lively spots. What surprised me was the number of people on the streets outside the pubs. There was a light drizzle and I would have thought everyone would head indoors. But then we remembered that New Zealand has recently instituted a no smoking policy in pubs & restaurants. So that explains it. After a couple of drinks there we headed back to the house at around 3 am, to find that people had gone to bed, so we did likewise.

Other highlights of my days in Hanmer include walking up Conical Hill and enjoying the views out over Hanmer and to the ring of mountains within which it lies, before walking back along unmarked paths through the forest plantation on the other side of the hill; a late afternoon visit to the Hot Springs (for which Hanmer is famous), where Tye & I ventured onto the tubular water slides and could have elbowed lots of little kids - and quite a few other young adults - out of our way to get to the totally pitch black tube, which was very cool, its only lighting being LED arrows that lit up when you passed under them to tell you which way you were about to be thrown; and a fabulous meal at Hanmer's poshest restaurant, where the food was wonderful (I had a to-die-for red onion & goat's cheese tart with a coulis of pesto and reduced balsamic vinegar followed by a most excellent rack of lamb on parmesan polenta) but the service, while pleasant, was appallingly bungled half the time. Still, we got free beers out of it so let's not complain too loudly.

On our last day we astonished ourselves by actually getting up early for the first time all week and cleaning up the house in record time. The only thing to slow down our departure from Hanmer was the useless woman at the estate agent's who was incapable of processing our payments at anything like a normal speed. Eventually, after an exasperating half an hour of faff, we said our fond farewells to one another and departed. A&B&I headed further up into the mountains, because our destination was the West Coast, and more specifically two cemeteries in Reefton and Westport for Amanda to visit the graves of her grandmothers. The weather en route was dire - but that's the west coast for you. The rain got worse as the day progressed, and it was only when we were safely back on the eastern coastal plains of Canterbury that the sun showed itself.

It was nice to be back at Amanda's mum's. I had enjoyed myself immensely in Hanmer, with a lovely bunch of people that I am honoured to think of as friends, and inevitably I was sad because our time together had drawn to a close. So it was good for me that I had a happy home to come back to - not strictly speaking my home, but nonetheless a house I had been made to feel very much at home in these last few weeks.