We found some cheap airfare (i.e. around $120 round trip), so we decided it was high time to go back to the South Island that we fell in love with on our honeymoon driving tour of NZ. Ironically, the bus trip to the airport on Friday took longer than the actual flight which was only an hour. Scott and I much preferred this hour flight to our recent 14 hour ones!
Once in Christchurch we picked up our rental car at the airport and were very fortunate to have the Budget employee say just as we were heading out into the chilly, rainy night to find the car, "You have to depress the clutch in order to release the parking break." This was fortunate because although Scott is an excellent driver and can drive a stick as well as drive on the opposite side of the car on the opposite side of the road...he cannot do both at the same time. So this statement stopped us dead in our tracks as Scott protested that he had specifically checked to make sure that he had reserved an automatic. To make a long story short-too late-Budget are hosers but they did have an automatic available for an additional fee which we grudgingly accepted and headed off to the hotel.
Our hotel, the All Seasons, was a little getto but had the two main requirements which were heat and a hot tub.
The view from the window was lovely.They also had a restaurant/bar attached that had very reasonably priced edible food and a wise-cracking bartender whom we both liked.
The only slightly downer was that for breakfast on Saturday morning we ended up spending $9 apiece for toast when we opted for the "Quick" breakfast as opposed to $20 apiece for a bit of bacon and eggs as well. We opted to find another breakfast location on Sunday and hit the jackpot, but I am getting ahead of myself.
First since it was quite late we had bar food at the restaurant (fried calamari for me and a ham toasty for Scott), and then went right to sleep for our big plans on Saturday. These plans included waking up early and jumping in the car for an all day drive down to Moeraki to see some boulders. This was an attraction that we had missed on our honeymoon due to some evening little blue penguin viewing that resulted in us traveling past the boulders well after pitch black darkness had fallen. On our way we had also decided to stop for lunch in Oamaru which you may remember is the site of the little blue penguin colony and the Whitestone Cheese Factory (we opted for lunch at the Whitestone Cheese Cafe, not the penguin colony).
But again, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. First, our plan to get up early and head out early was slightly hindered by our not getting up early. However, the day was a glorious one (sunny and not too chilly which is a rarity for winters in the South Island) and once we were on the road after our extremely filling toast breakfast, things went smoothly...if not slightly slower than anticipated.
Neat clock tower in Christchurch on our way out.
Glorious day!
Snowy South Island mountains!
South Island braided river!
More gratuitous mountains.
We drove through Timaru and reminisced about when Scott hit the curb with the rental car on our honeymoon resulting in much drama between us and the rental car agency (we actually both spotted the offending curb at the same time). We got into Oamaru about 3pm and had a late cheese plate lunch which was fantastic and after much cajoling on my part, Scott bought us some cheese to take home with us. But we were quickly losing daylight (since it gets dark around 5pm in the South Island in the winter), so we were quickly back on the road to the boulders.
Mmmmmmm...cheese!
Historical structure that we didn't stop at.
Domesticated deer in the boulder cafe parking lot. You had to pay to use their stairs, so we went to the free public access point a bit further away.
The boulders were actually a bit cooler than I had originally thought that they would be. They are advertised as large round rocks, but they are actually huge geodes. We spent about half an hour taking in and jumping on the boulders, but we had one more stop to make before nightfall, so we didn't tarry.
I actually think that the boulders are fossilized Moa eggs myself.
Scott's delicate, baby feet got wet...awww sad!
Our final stop was the yellow-eyed penguin viewing sight back in Oamaru. We were fortunate enough to see 2 yellow-eyed penguins there on our honeymoon tour and were hoping to spot some more. We were not disappointed. We spotted 4 penguins this trip! It was a great triumph as several factors consorted to thwart our penguin watching plans. Firstly, the yellow-eyed penguin viewing site was not labeled on our map, so I had to get us there basically via memory from our last visit. Secondly, when we first arrived we noticed that the entrance had been roped shut and that there was danger tape plastered across the gate. This at first quite upset us as we thought that there would be no penguin viewing after all, however, before we turned to get back in the car, several people came galavanting up the trail and hopped over the gate. Since some of the people were children, we felt that the danger couldn't have been too great, so we followed their lead and hopped over the gate ourselves. The reason for the danger tape was soon apparent as we headed down the trail to the cliff side overlook as the recent heavy rains had caused several mud slides (or slips as the Kiwis call them) which partially obstructed parts of the path and had taken out some of the fencing. Fortunately, it seemed that many people had ignored the warning tape and blazed a new trail over the debris, so we followed in their footsteps and soon found ourselves at the overlook enclosure with a few other intrepid penguin watchers. I apologize for the Bigfoot reminiscent penguin photos, but we were quite high up and since the sun was setting, there wasn't much light to work with.
As you can see by these last few photos, night had fallen by the time we left the penguins and so we had quite a long drive back to Christchurch in the dark. But Scott got us back to the hotel safe and sound and we had dinner at the hotel restaurant which was decent and more importantly very convenient. We decided to check out the hotel hot tub after dinner and found it to be...er...lacking. It was a do-it-yourself type project with lots of tile and rapidly lost heat as soon as we took the cover off. We also couldn't discover how to make the jets work. We would have taken a swim instead, but the 1m deep pool was "out of order", so instead we headed up to bed to get some rest as we still had a few driving plans for Sunday.The next morning we did not even kid ourselves about getting up early and decided to venture out of the hotel for some Sunday brunch despite miserable cold, rainy weather. We had the good fortune of being just a few blocks away from Sophie's Cafe which is quite famous down in Christchurch, but we just happened to stumble upon in our hungry wanderings. The place was packed and even though we lacked reservations, they found us first a temporary table, then a permanent one. We both had very large portions of nummy breakfast fare and looking at the menu (three from the bottom) we knew it was destiny that had brought us there. ;)
After our large and fulfilling breakfast we headed out to explore Banks Peninsula just southeast of Christchurch only to be held up and turned around by the Christchurch Queen's Birthday Marathon whose route went straight across where we needed to go. After some exciting navigation, we finally found our way clear and were basically going to wing it as far as site seeing along the peninsula. The first stop we decided would be a scenic overlook. Now, as I mentioned, Sunday's weather was a bit more NZ winter typical with a temperature in the fifties and on and off freezing cold rain. This made for a bit of peril as we motored along "scenic" Summit Road.
To the "scenic" overlook.
And the "scenic" trail...that we did not venture down...
Did I mention that part of the road simply was missing at one point?
After that harrowing side-trip, we got back on the main road and our next stop was called Birdling's Flat which my supervisor had told me about. In a nutshell, Birdling's Flat is a terribly desolate stretch of rock beach that is important for Maori eel fishing. You cannot tell from the pictures, but it is also the skipping rock capital of the world as all of the rocks are very round and quite flat.
After that terribly depressing stop, we were back on the main road and determined not to stop again until we hit Akaroa which is a historically French town at the end of the main road. We saw a few decent vistas along the way.
We finally made it the Akaroa and ate lunch at a nice little cafe called Ma Maison (my house or my kitchen, I can't remember which). Here we had very milky hot chocolate and french styled cuisine minus the french snobbery which was much appreciated.
I especially liked the way the bar was a boat winch. The name of the boat in case you were wondering is "Passing Wind"...classy...
Just outside Ma Maison was Akaroa's lovely iconic pier which I'm sure is prettier when it is sunny.
We would have liked to explore Akaroa a bit more, but we had reservations for dinner at a fancy restaurant in Christchurch, so we were keen to get back on the road to make sure we were back in time to get gussied up.
On the way back we did see a hint of blue sky, but sadly it didn't last.
When we arrived back in Christchurch we found that we actually had a few hours to spare, so we walked around the city a bit. Sadly the Warner Historic Hotel that we stayed at the nights surrounding our wedding is now a Novotel.
But Christchurch is still a neat English styled city.
With some cool fountains in the park.
Dinner was at the Curator's House which is actually where we ate the night we were married.
We had a delicious assorted olive appetizer.
Then I had the duck and Scott had some delicious fish dish.
We also both had the Creme Brulee which is one of the house specialties. They were delicious and huge, and I ate way too much forcing us to do a hasty retreat back to the hotel.Monday we hopped back on a plane to Auckland and had most of the day to recuperate from our vacation and prepare to get back to the daily grind...although it still took longer to get home by bus than our flight was...
Sorry if anyone was disappointed by our lack of pain and agony on this blog post, hopefully our next will be tramping again and full of adventure when it gets just a bit warmer!
Until next time,
Jen (and Scott)
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