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It rained through the night, and continued to rain - which made the van all the more cozy. We had bought bacon and egg a few days ago and there would be no better day to have a fry up for breakfast. The camp sites in NZ are amazing - they typically have kitchen, tv lounges, bbq's as well as the standard bathroom set up. We barely used the gas stove that came with the van.
Stef also prepared the crayfish salad for lunch, with coriander, ginger and lime. Mmmmm :)
We were glad our plans today largely involved staying in the van because of a long drive to Christchurch (although we chose the marginally shorter rote via Lewis Pass over Arthur's Pass since we wouldn't have seen much with the low lying cloud). Decided to get Stef's caffeine fix in Nelson first where it was a sleepy Sunday...
We drove back through Murchison where we had our tasty crayfish salad roadside lunch in the van, and pushed on for Christchurch. We wanted to go to Bank's Peninsula but thought this might be too far - a lot of campsite offices and backpacker receptionists finish at 8pm.
We had decided to try and find a double room in a backpacker's place for 2 nights instead of sleeping in the van to give us time to re-pack our rucksacks. We read in the lonely planet that Sumner was quite a nice place. It was also mid-way between Christchurch and Bank's Peninsula which we thought it could be a good base from which we could visit both places.
On the drive out to Sumner however, I began to remember a conversation with my friend, Nia, who had been living in Christchurch during the earthquake. I was wondering whether she'd told me about this being one of the worst affected areas... The road out was really uneven and bumpy - clearly damaged, although it had been patched up it was unlike all the other very well maintained roads we had travelled on so far. Then we saw huge shipping containers on the side of the road, which had obviously been placed to contain the debris of the rockfall that had occurred. It was quite substantial; in fact we could see that some houses had come down altogether. When we got to the hostel, it was closed as it was right in front of a cliff that had obviously collapsed. We drove around and noticed that quite a few buildings had been boarded up, or had a pile of roof-tiles missing. Quite shocking to see first-hand the damage that was caused in February. It must have affected people quite badly.
It was 7pm and it was clear we wouldn't get to Bank's Peninsula before the all crucial 8pm. Instead, we phoned ahead to our preferred listing in the guide book, which turned out to be fully booked. We decided to give up on our idea of two consecutive nights in one place and head back into Christchurch.
We headed for a hostel on the skirts of town, which... was full! Gertie, the helpful hostel receptionist told us there was a holiday park just down the road however. It was another night back in the van for us!
The campsite was quite nice though, not too massive. We knocked together a ready-steady-cook meal of pan-fried scallops with pasta (and a chicken noodle cuppa soup for seasoning!) in a white wine sauce. Interesting! We made use of the tv lounge to read without running the car battery down before turning in.
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