After a whopping 103 days spent travelling in New Zealand, we have come to the end of this part of the trip. We have driven over 7200 kms around this lovely country, seen a great many beautiful sights and explored as many nooks and crannies as possible.
After leaving Arthur's Pass, we headed east to Christchurch to stay, once again, with the Cooke family who had kindly offered to put up with us again. Thursday night was spent enjoying a lovely traditional Kiwi Roast (complete with Kiwi Pavlova) at Erin's parents (thanks to them!) Instead of staying just the one night however, we stayed for 2, enabling us to take part in a party at their house. All in all we got to bed far too late, had slightly overcooked the booze department but had a cracking time. :)
Niall had lots of fun on the pinball machine with Jason and Sam. A small competition was had with Jason and I think it is important to post the results:
Niall 9: Jason 15
Many thanks to the Cooke family once again!
From Christchurch Laura drove straight to Picton for our 2pm ferry crossing - Niall did not enjoy the journey at all! Unfortunately for us, and especially Niall, the sea was a bit rough - not something that aided hangovers in the slightest. Despite that we made it to Wellington safe and sound and managed a good night of kipping to compensate. As we had already passed through we decided we would just stay the one night before cracking on to Napier on the east coast. It is a unique town in that, after an eartquake early last century, the whole town was rebuilt in an art deco style. T'was a lovely place and the weather was certainly a fair few degrees warmer than it had been on the South Island! We had a lovely stroll along the beach just taking in the sun and art deco sights.
From Napier we hopped back into the car for a trip to Rotorua, a popular tourist spot famous for its volcanic surrounds. For those die hard blog readers, you may remember our earlier trip to Orakei Korako. This time we went to a place known as Wai-o-Tapu - famous for the Champagne pool (not what we were hoping for - but very pretty nonetheless). A walk takes you past mud pools and boiling waterfall scenery for a very scenic 3 kilometers. We enjoyed ourselves very much but, now starting to tire from the long drives, were glad of the chance to soak our bones in the Hostel's own hot pool - bliss.
We had intended to go from Rotorua to the Coromandel but unfortunately the weather turned filthy so we opted instead to head straight to Auckland where Amy, who you may remember from our first few days of the trip, has put us up for the last few nights of our trip.
Fortunately however the trip does not end here. On Sunday we fly to Sydney where we will spend a week getting to know a bit about this famous city. In addition we shall be paying a flying visit to the Blue Mountains before once again hopping on a plance to the tropical Gold Coast where we shall spend 3 nights in Cairns and ten in Port Douglas. the weather should be a lovely 25C+ and the Coral sea (home to the Great Barrier reef) just as warm. :)
Until then,
Ruff, Niall & Laura
No comments:
Post a Comment