Charlie Bs Christchurch

Hi Folks from Rangiora, New Zealand, about 30 minutes from Christchurch. When I started this email it was snowing heavily, though it's stopped now. First off, let me say...I love speaking english. Fluently and elequently, poorly with slang. Understanding and being understood (well, for the most part anyway). Unfortunately, email don't come cheap or free in New Zealand. And needless to say that since our last post about 3 weeks ago, a lot has happenened. ... We made it quickly to the South Isl...

Sat 21st Jan One thing about driving around here is you get a lot of flies & moths committing suicide on the front of the van, you get a fair amount at home but here they're on a much bigger scale. On the way to Christchurch we stopped at the Cookie Time factory shop in Hornby, Cookie Time cookies are huge in diameter and thickness as well as delicious, so I couldn't stop myself from buying a 1 kg bag of broken cookies for $6! They're usually $1.70 each! Having arrived in Christchurch mid...

I flew to New Zealand to start my tour of the South Island. I'm only in the country for 3 weeks, so i reckon i'll only get to see the South Island while i'm here. I shall upload photos at a later date. Christchurch is the first place and it's really nice here. Not a great deal to do, but the Buskers festival is making it worth while staying to see. On Monday i shall be leaving in a campervan to see as much of the island as possible. Cheers for reading this small brief entry.

Back in Christchurch in what is my final stop of the New Zealand tour. I have the campervan for a further day, but purely down to the fact i've done 2500km's in the last 5 days i'm quite happy to end the driving for now. I have a further week in Christchurch to sort of avoid spending any money, so this will be it from NZ and possibly it from my travelpod tour. I actually will be heading back to Melbourne for a night before heading back to Scotland, so perhaps there will be a journal added yet...

After the wedding I had a choice: chill in Auckland for another week or hit the south island which I'd heard rave reviews about. Unfortunately I couldn't rebook my flight out to Chile for a week later so the visit would be brief. It was a tricky decision but in the end I booked a flight to Christchurch and a swim with dolphins for the next day at a place called Akaroa. On the website it said that shuttles from Christchurch connected to Akaroa in time for the swims. Unfortunately that was a li...

After lake takepo we spent a couple of days here. We didn't do much other than chill out with a group of Irish from the hostel. There was a grand beer garden out the back and a decent enough set-up. We had stayed here already and wanted to head back to the same hostel. Although the first time we stayed there was a helpful girl behind reception but this time there was a complete tool. The girl wanted a passport off us to secure a blanket for the night. I was shivering one night and one of the ...

Hallo ihr Lieben! ...finally made it down to New Zealand! Ich habe es endlich geschafft und bin gestern nacht in Christchurch angekommen, nachdem ich mal wieder einen ganzen, lieben langen Tag im Flugzeug, auf Flughaefen, im Bus etc. verbracht habe. ...und ehrlich gesagt bin ich froh, in den naechsten Wochen wohl kein Flugzeug mehr zu betreten. Ich habe immer noch ein bisschen mit einem Jet-lag zu tun und bin meistens bis tief in die Nacht wach und komme morgens nicht aus dem Bett. ..aber ab ...

We arrived into Christchurch around 1-ish, and managed to check into Charlie B's Backpackers before heading straight to bed. After a pretty good nights sleep we woke up to our first day in New Zealand, and set about planning what we were going to do with our one month in the country. We decided to go for the MagicBus for our transport, which was by far the cheapest way of getting around the country and turned out to be a really good choice. The drivers we had going round we all really helpful...

I woke up with the first hangover I'd had for a while and made my way to the bus station. I admit that I'm a bit hazy about the journey as I spent a lot of it asleep. I was on the Intercity express bus as there were only a couple of Stray passengers and the stray bus needed to go further south. I did however see some fantastic views and New Zealand's highest mountain, Mt Cook. Well, I saw the cloud surrounding Mt Cook anyway! We arrived in Christchurch and I made my way to Charlie B's backpac...