Kiwi at last

5:45pm 13th November

Last real day today, and now we’re all parked up at our last camp stop it’s all rather sad. I really don’t want this trip to be over; and really it isn’t as we still have several days in Hong Kong yet. But nonetheless it does feel like it’s over.

Yesterday we enjoyed our visit to the Moeraki Boulders — they’re really unusual. Nobody quite knows why these large spherical balls have been created, then buried in sedimentary rock to be finally eroded out onto a beach. Spooky really, just goes to show what amazing things Nature can throw up from time to time!

After the boulders we popped to Aoraki, an area to the east of Christchurch. We’d be recommended visiting there by the camp-site owner in Invercargill — we’re very glad we popped along as it was gorgeous. A very french-influenced quaint port town with some lovely views of the sea. We did our usual trick of going into a bar ostensibly “for a drink” and then ending up finishing a bottle of wine and leaving somewhat drunkenly many hours later!

Today we’ve been looking around Christchurch. It’s another pretty (for a large city) place, and we spent a happy few hours wandering around the Botanic Gardens and the various shopping areas. It’s still just a city though, nothing too amazing. We’ve just parked up; Ness has popped out to see the shops while I’ve just emptied the camper van of its various effluvia for the penultimate time.

A quiet night in tonight, then tomorrow we’re off to find some kiwi. About bloody time, we’ve been here a month and still not actually seen New Zealand’s iconic flightless bird. After that we’ll be dropping the van off then killing time until 4am the next morning to check in at the airport. No sense getting a hotel for the night; we’re just not going to be in it long enough. Not going to be too nice a night; but what can you do. Hopefully there’ll be some wireless internet access at the airport at least. The last week I’ve been incommunicado from the internet; it would seem the south island’s behind in internet stakes with hardly a camp site having internet access let along wireless. From texts from my parents it’d appear xania.org is down at the moment too; I hope it’s something easy to fix.