Our South Island Adventure - Last leg

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So we wake up really really really early this time as it is a long drive back to Christchurch. The plan is to be able to arrive by 3ish to return the van. We tried to be quiet as we left the camp site but that can actually be quite difficult with a noisy van but well we will never know if we woke anyone up. It was supposed to take us 2 and half hours to get to Hokitika where we planned to have breakfast and do some shopping as it is home to New Zealand's best Pounamu (jade) and hopefully be out of there by 12. So it was a little to my surprise when we arrived just after 8! Even more to my surprise was that all the shops were pretty much open. We had the best egg and bacon pie for breakfast at a little cafe before we checked out the shops. We were warned by the guide to check that you were definitely buying NZ jade as some of it is imported and they had recommended some shops to go to, which is good because there were quite a few of them. There were surprisingly quite a few tourists too considering it was so early in the morning and did I mention it was a Sunday! I loved the stuff I saw at the Traditional Jade co and hubby bought me a beautiful koru necklace.

It was 9.30 when we were ready to go so it turned out to be a lazy drive to Christchurch through Arthur's Pass. The scenery again during the drive was really beautiful, a dry mountainous landscape.

We arrived in Christchurch pretty much bang on time and were given a lift to our motel where we crashed out for at least an hour. We decided to have a late lunch early dinner in town and went back to the restaurant where we went in the beginning. The food there is good though the service maybe was a bit slow but we were not really complaining as we were enjoying the weather. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and it was nice to see Christchurch in the sunshine this time. I refused to take the camera out with me this time though!

We enjoyed watching crap TV tonight (sky movies :O), reminiscing and of course the usual ugh work tomorrow!

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