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Published: November 24th 2012
After a turbulent flight to New Zealand we arrived in Christchurch early in the morning. We hung around the airport for a couple of hours until the Spaceship office opened and we could collect our new camper, named The Hoff, much to our amusement.
We spent our first day briefly seeing the destruction of the earthquake in 2011 before finding a Pac and Save (thank you Sarah!) and then heading to Woodend beach where we caught up on some much needed sleep as well as listening to some folky music courtesy of the mini festival that was happening on site!
Our next stop was Banks Peninsular; the drive to our camp site at Okains Bay was via the magnificent climb up Summit road, formed by two giant volcanic eruptions eight million years ago. We looked down on Akaroa, the view was out of this world, one of the most amazing views we'd ever seen. After our night on Banks we headed through Lyttelton a cute hippy coastal town obviously badly affected by the quake before meeting up with Dr Laura Sellers and her lovely fella Scott in Sumner. We had a relaxing few days, a windy walk along the
beach; it reminded me of home a little, as did the houses teetering over the edge above, but for different reasons..... We also spent a day walking around ChCh, it was a real shock, we knew the earthquake had been big but the destruction was everywhere and still a long way to go before the city is back to looking complete. Not sure how Haiti and other poorer countries can ever recover from similar natural disasters.
We left Sellers and headed South for the night at a free camp spot near Geraldine, in the middle of nowhere but on a small river surrounded by forest and had a romantic night under the stars with a fire going and a bottle of quality Marlborough sauv blanc for four quid!
We got up early and headed to Lake Tekapo, we did a three hour walk around the lake and up to the top-notch stargazing hills, unfortunately it was forecast to be a cloudy night and we missed out seeing the sky from one of the best places on the planet! We camped right on the water with unobstructed views across the turquoise lake and backdrop of rolling hills and snow
dropped mountains, it was perfect and we couldn't stop talking about how beautiful the place was.
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