The first thing to do was to stock our fridge and cupboards with food to last us the week. So we headed for countdown.. yes thats right countdown.. what a stupid name for a supermarket. An hour later and about $90 out of pocket it was time to hit the road. Not really having a plan of where we were going we drove about an hour to Rakaia and stopped at a caravan park there. This is where we got all of our maps, leaflets and guides out and started to really plan our journey. It was great sat in the campervan with a table, lights and heating on at night, instead of cooking tea for 5 o'clock and going to bed by 6 like we were doing in Australia. We've not given our new campervan a name yet but when we do we'll be sure to tell you.
After a really good nights sleep, under two duvets, that the kind woman at apollo gave us we finally got up at 10am, the first lie in, in agesss!!
We got on the road at about 11.30am with Peter driving as Lucy still had a little bit of an eye infection.. which we forgot to tell you..but.. Lucy had a little bit of an eye infection whilst in Christchurch.. nothing major though. haha!!
It was a lovely day with not a cloud in the sky so we decided to drive to Methven where we drove along the side of Mount Hutt, which had a little bit of snow on top. Beautiful. As there wasn't much to see and do in Methven we drove further to Geraldine.
Geraldine is big into their cheese, fudge, chocolate etc.. we thought GREAT.. this is just up our street. We pulled in and parked, walked to where was recommended and got disappointed in a matter of minutes. It was rubbish. Infact that rubbish we bought just ONE chocolate to share, which is not like us.
After Geraldine we kept on driving to Lake Tekapo, now this place is pretty. Arriving here at 3.50pm we pulled in at the 'church of the good sheperd' which is a tiny church with the most stunning views. We had a little walk and then realised we needed to go to the 'i site' (information centre) before it closed. We needed to find out if there was anywhere we could freedom camp (camping without paying.) The answer to our question was no but we were given the choice of a camp site for $40 or a camp site for $10. We drove up to the $10 campsite which was about 25 minutes away to where there was a sign saying it was operated by an Honesty box. Nobody around, nobody else camping there, we didn't even step out of the vehicle. We were naughty.. very naughty and slept there and then left very early in the morning without paying a penny.
We drove into Lake Tekapo village to grab some milk before making our way to the $40 camp site to where we were based to go on some walking trails, it had absolutely chucked it down all morning so we sat in the van for an hour or so. Then at about 12 noon we got wrapped up and started the Mt John walkway. When getting to the top of Mt John it was very misty and we couldn't see a thing, which is why we took a couple of pictures of sheep, passing some time hoping the fog would pass. But it didn't so we carried on with our walk trying to get some good pictures. The walk ended up being around 3 hours, which we really enjoyed. Heaters whacked back on in the campervan and dinner was made.. at this point it started to rain again.. talk about good timing.
Later that night we decided to make good use of our microwave and cook a couple of jacket potatoes accompanied with tuna and baked beans.. yummy!!
It was quite chilly that night, even under the two duvets. At 8am in the morning Peter suggested going for a run, Ok then.. so off we went for about 30 minutes. After breakfast we decided to treat ourselves to Tekapo Springs.. hot pools at around 36 -40 degrees. It was lush.
Next destination Mt Cook..