Christchurch

The trip from Dunedin to Christchurch took over five hours so it was good that the scenery was again outstanding. There is no need for Motorways here but they do have short stretches mostly in the cities. Navigating within the city can be a bit stressful but the roads usually follow a grid pattern so you should cross the street you want eventually. Christchurch is spread across quite a large area but does not have a big population so the traffic is mostly light wherever you drive, there are old restored trams on the streets trundling around but they don’t cause any driving difficulties.

There is a main square called Cathedral Square where there is not surprisingly an oldish Cathedral and this is where all the tourists seem to gather, from Wednesday there was a local market on the square selling all sorts of things.

It was raining the second day we arrived here so we decided to leave the trip up to the volcano rim until the day after and the weather changed back to sunny and warm again. You get to the crater rim via a Gondola and at the top and there are 360 degree views of the surrounding sea, lakes and countryside. After a quick walk round the crater rim we headed back down via the Gondola and by this time the wind had got up a bit and the gondola was swaying quite a bit , Sheila was not amused and especially when I decided to help the swaying along a bit, good job there wasn’t a door on her side.

We took a trip to Scarborough and New Brighton in the same day, both with superb beaches and New Brighton with a pier. There are always a lot of kids out of school taking surfing lessons which is rather different than UK.

A tram tour via the Botanical Gardens took us past a Brewpub, only by coincidence, so we had dinner there that night and the ales sampled were very good. It was pointed out that Sheila must have written the last two Blog entries because there was no mention of Breweries or fishing.

It’s our last night in NZ because tomorrow we fly to Melbourne and are quite excited to change countries. I was really surprised when I took the hire car back and found we had completed over 6000 Km
We have thoroughly enjoyed NZ, all the magnificent scenery and friendly people, if there is one slight disappointment it is the food, we were expecting more Pacific Rim type dining but it is more like home cooking, meat and two veg. This will not stop us returning for three weeks in March for a more relaxing itinerary.

We would like to take the opportunity to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.