Yesterday, Saturday, was a day revolving around travel to get ourselves ready for handing the camper back (sniff sniff). We hand the camper back on Monday afternoon, so we began by heading to our drop off location, Christchurch. Around a 3 hour drive minus the stops, but there were plenty of gorgeous places to stop on the way – so we made a day of it, essentially. Passing through Arthur’s Pass first off, a gorgeous drive between the mountains, the Southern Alps. Our first stop was a look out of which 4 rare Kea birds joined us. Kea’s are a rare endangered mountain parrot, of which there are only 500 left in the world. They all reside in the Southern part of NZ.
Next major stop bar a few ‘view’ stops, was an unexpected one for us, it looked popular so we pulled in. A quick scout showed us there were caves just a 10 minute downhill walk away, we ventured down but didn’t attempt the caving – as we lacked the head torches of which we’re definitely required.
Finally we arrived at Christchurch, checking in to our campsite for our penultimate night in NZ.
Christchurch seems rather nice from our brief glimpse, but we will see more tomorrow, it seems very ‘English’ which is pleasant but also somewhat not, as it’s what we’ve tried to escape for a period of our life!
Today, Sunday, we drove down to Aokora which is South of Christchurch, planning to dolphin, seal & penguin watch. Unfortunately the poor weather in the morning caused a lack of bookings to get the boat out, so we were left just checking out Aokora, then heading back 1h30 North to Christchurch for our last evening in the camper (sob sob..)
We must sleep, early start as ever tomorrow.
S&K.
