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The final chapter!
Day 45 - After getting to the camp after stargazing it was past 1am last night so after a lie in, we left fond memories of Lake Tekapo behind and drove toward the east coast with the Southern Alps in our rear view mirrors. Nikki drove for a few hours today, stopping in Ashburton briefly before heading 25km out of town toward the coast to a campsite. Upon arriving we found a camp full of older couples on holiday as the area is apparently good for fishing. There was a communal kitchen too (although we were the only ones who used it!) so we can cook and wash up properly, and it was cheaper than the basic camps we've stayed at with only a toilet, a good find.
Day 46 - As the campsite is so nice and also cheap to stay at we are relaxing for the day and staying another night. We went for a walk along the beach at midday and were joined by a local black Labrador who played fetch with Andy. Back at the camp we did our last big wash so that all our clothes are clean for Fiji and the U.S. There were washing lines but we had no pegs and being on the beach meant it was very windy. The next couple of hours were spent watching the washing, adjusting clothes that were out of position and picking up clothes that had blown on the floor. Watching clothes dry was only marginally more fun than watching paint dry!
Day 47 - The penultimate day before giving the van back! Today is our last full day in the van and we have been blessed with glorious sunshine. We left the nice campsite and headed for the peninsula of land that juts out from NZ south of Christchurch, the Banks Peninsula. This pretty big area of land was formed by an eruption from an enormous volcano and if you view it from above it is rounded, other than sections of water that run inland between what was valleys of lava flow. We drove to a town called Akaroa which had a seaside feel to it. We had a walk along the high street, drove a couple of minutes to see a lighthouse, and ate ice cream in a park. Andy had a blackberry real fruit ice cream made by a machine where you put a scoop of vanilla in followed by a handful of blackberries and then another scoop of ice cream, which is then pushed together and out into a cone forming a purple coloured blackberry ice cream! It brought back memories because Andy used to pick blackberries from the bush in Grandma's garden and smush them into vanilla ice cream when he was younger. If only he'd trademarked it!
There is only one way on and off the peninsula so we headed back on ourselves but have stopped at a free campsite next to a lake. It's very quiet and peaceful and a very apt last place to be camping at as it is similar to many of the other places we've stayed when in the middle of nowhere. Tomorrow we return to the hustle and bustle of a city as we will be dropping off the car in Christchurch.
Day 48 - We woke up this morning to one of, if not the hottest day we've had in NZ so far, 30 degrees. Due to the location of our camp we are also experiencing gale force winds, which dnn't really help when we're trying to pack up all our stuff! Once we'd succeeded we had a nice final drive onward to Christchurch in the sunshine. We had bought a portable gas cooker early on in our road trip for $30 so we were looking out for a 2nd hand shop so we could sell it before returning the car. We popped to an information centre and as luck would have it, a couple had been looking to do the same the previous day so they had a phone number for a chap who was buying them to fit in other rental cars! The lady called him and over the phone he offered us $20 - brilliant! The lady in the i-site gave us the money there and then so we didn't have to wait around and the chap would pop in later that day to reimburse them. What a result! With our new wealth safely in our wallets we headed to the airport and returned the car. We'd like to say we said goodbye but we were eager to head back into town to our hostel so we could feel a degree of normality again! We did really enjoy our time in the car though and she did us proud up and down all those mountain roads. We worked out that Nikki had driven us 6,500km during these 7 weeks on the road, what an absolute star! And so this spells the end of our road trip around the country. A well earned rest in an actual bed for the next 4 nights is definitely in order!
Christchurch.
We got to our hostel where they are equipped with out of this world gadgets such as a tv, a toaster, an oven and an all important shower. Andy popped his head into the tv room where the highlights of the Man Utd game were on, what great timing! Once we'd refreshed we had dinner before walking into the city centre for a stroll while there are less people around. We will do some proper exploring over the next few days.
Over our few days in Christchurch we reverted to our old schedule of lots of walking and wandering! We visited the museum which was really good. They had lots of info on the early Maori settlers as well as the large native bird they drove to extinction, the Moa. There was also a room showing a projection that ran from September 4th of last year when the big earthquake hit, right up to the day you happen to be visiting. Astonishingly there have been over 4,500 aftershocks or tremors since then.
Speaking of these, we thought we'd felt a couple of them but couldn't be sure as they are small enough that if you're walking around you wouldn't notice but we'd definitely felt a couple of small movements while watching tv. Then one evening we were about to watch the news when our chairs started jiggling around with us sat in them. It lasted around 10 seconds, long enough this time for us to know what it was. Nothing fell off the walls or anything dramatic, it was just a bit of a wiggle underneath us! We confirmed it the next day when a chap at the info centre was talking about it with someone, and we then looked online where we saw it had registered at 4.6 on the Richter scale - how exciting!
We also went to the art gallery for a couple of hours and had a brief stroll around the weekend market, and we ate at a restaurant called Lotus Heart that was recommended to us by Harry a friend of ours from the UK, who claimed it was his favourite restaurant in the world - high praise indeed! It's a really relaxed veggie/vegan restaurant with a huge menu and a great view overlooking Cathedral Square and we had a really nice meal. We had a fairly relaxing few days in one place and that was what we needed.
That brings us right up to date. As this is being written we're back in Auckland for one day before heading to Fiji. We flew in from Christchurch this morning and had a little look around the city. Nikki is relaxing in our hotel room watching the tv and Andy has just got back from a second impromptu meeting with his cousin Phillip who is in Auckland at the moment too. Didn't expect to see him again so soon but it was nice to grab something to eat and have a catch up as it's been 4 months since Bali - time really does fly!
So this is now the end of our 2 months literally on the other side of the planet. We've really enjoyed New Zealand and it's been great to do it at our own pace being able to go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted. The country is absolutely stunning and probably can't be rivalled in terms of scenery. We do however feel that we have seen everything we wanted to, so if we don't ever get a chance to come back we don't feel as though we will be missing out. We've had a blast!
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