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Published: November 20th 2008
Thrillseekers Canyon
Hanmer Spring Bungy venueWe took off for our second weekend camping jaunt - this time to
Hanmer Springs for the Labour Day long weekend.
We arrived at the 'Top Ten' camp-site on the Saturday afternoon and the weather was fantastic - the sun was shining and we needed to set up our new 'beach shelter' in order to escape the heat. We anticipated having to sleep outside that night due to the tropical conditions... After a quick jaunt into town for lunch and to pick up some supplies we headed back to finish setting up camp just as the rain started. Someone had joked that snow was forecast but we didn't believe it.
That evening we headed back into town to spend the evening in our favourite Hanmer pub and watched our province, Canterbury, win the Air New Zealand Cup final in a hard-fought match against Wellington. By the time we left it was raining heavily and getting quite chilly, reminding us that this is what happens high up in the mountains, even in Spring.
In true camping style, we endured a very cold and wet night interspersed with a few fun trips outside for Tim to re-peg storm guys and
Camping in the heat
(That's not the tent - it's the beach/sun shelter) ensure that he was cold and wet enough. We emerged on as soon as it was light on Sunday morning to see fresh snow on the mountains and a very clean car! A proper Kiwi breakfast was in order so we abandoned the idea of freezing to death cooking porridge on the stove and headed back to another pub in town for lots of warm drinks and hot food.
Next, we headed over to the outdoor geothermal pools (fantastic in the rain!) and bought re-entry tickets so we could also come back later in the day. After a couple of hours of Luke-Skywalker-Empire-Strikes-Back-style-thawing later we were ready for a walk. Helpfully the sun had come out, so we were hoping it would be working on drying out our tent and useless sun shelter. We drove out of town and tramped for a couple of hours up to the snow-line to see the spectacular 41m
Dog Stream Waterfall. The melting snow in the trees gave the impression that it was raining which was a nice effect.
That evening, we returned from our walk and headed back to the thermal pools for another hour. It was the cleanest we'd ever
been camping! Thoroughly de-ached, we ate in a swanky Asian-Indian-ish restaurant - highly recommended and somewhere we'll definitely take you if you come to visit us!
The next day (Labour Day public holiday) was spectacular. The conditions were perfect for cooking chocolate banana porridge at dawn! Going home was not an option so we decided that rather than drive straight back to Christchurch, we'd head East to
Kaikoura for seafood, seals and a walk on the beach.
The pictures tell it all really. A great time was had by all.
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