Strathern Motor Lodge Christchurch

... Estoy en Nueva Zelanda, y me lo
estoy pasando muy bien. Feliz Navidad a todo el mundo! Bon Nadal !
Siamo
in clima natalizio, sono lontana e mi manca la famiglia, per questo ho
deciso di rifarmi viva con il mondo. Sono in Nuova Zelanda e mi sto divertendo
tantissimo. Buon Natale a tutti quanti.

... We also went to Lyttleton, a fishing town near Christchurch, the other side of a big hill we intended to walk up. No joy as the weather closed in. Lyttleton is a fairly grim looking town in bad weather...

Hotel SO was quite exciting, very cheap, modern, with some very contemporary decor, but extremely small. I don't envy Sarah sharing a room with me in a place that small, but I suppose it was good training for the camper van to come!

... of his money-saving plans and I would find a hostel in whichever towns and cities we ended up in. Also as Martin has an ipod adapter in the car he would be treated to my amazing music along the way. This currently constitutes a lot of Elvis Costello, Elbow, Florence and the Machine and the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I was tempted to ask if that pretty much negated the need for me to pay petrol but decided against it. He is certainly getting the best of the deal though.

The ...

... especially the cathedral. I went inside, it looked pretty impressive and was rather expansive, although not to different from anything in the UK. I got a couple of cool pics of the large vase sculpture next to the cathedral, it looks brilliant. Christchurch has a lot of museums,art galleries and history so there is plenty of things to check out. Afer wandering around some streets for a while, doing some exploring, I headed off to a exhibition/art ...

... amp; bolted. Grabbed a bottle of coke at the servo & retired to the nursing home for a late afternoon duty free cocktail session. The meal in the All Seasons restaurant was exceptional, being plentiful, diverse & tasty at a very reasonable price. Everyone enjoyed their meals - no complaints at all. Day 2 - Time to hitch up the wagons & hit the trail west. Basic instruction on lighting wagonfires, bunking down & operating the nightsoil "cassette" (what a cute name for ...

... croc harry was the original crocodile hunter! so harry's home is that amazing because it is adorned with bras and knickers, hanging from the ceiling; international football shirts complete with scribbled messages of thanks to harry for opening up his home; wall mouldings of naked women, possibly sculpted by harry himself; photos of all and sundry who has visited harry's; a visitor book; and again all those hundreds of scribbled wall messages from girls and guys from ...

... church cafe. Anyway, the thing we regretted missing most was a visit to the International Antarctic Center.  During the city tour, I asked the local guide what he liked best about the Center.  He responded that they give you parkas and mucklucks and let you experience minus 18 degree snow and wind conditions in a special room.  Not quite the incentive for us to call our travel agent for a change in itinerary. As it turns out, we were ...

... on a camera. We stopped at these pancake rocks that are formed as the tectonic plate gets pushed vertical and the waves crash against them over hundreds of millions of years. Pretty cool stuff! When we got to Greymouth we checked into a great hostel. It was built next to a stream that takes you out to these wetlands and they offered free sea kayaks so of course PT and I took advantage ...

... lots of things to do i would love to go back and spend a few days there just chilling out. The last day of the tour and it was time to go back to Christchurch. Ive really enjoyed my time here, the country reminds me of the Lake District back in the uk, escept this is 10 times more beautiful, its a country you can really loose yourself in and just enjoying being here without the need to actually do anything! i would love to come back one day. Another thing that made this ...