The Last Leg

Seals and their cubs, near Kaikora

With the end in sight we started to head south towards Christchurch, for the last leg of our journey here in New Zealand. We have a few days left and on route down from Blenheim to Christchurch we decided to take the coast road to Kaikora. This is a little seaside village on the east coast that is famed for it's sea life. Especially the numerous trips available to see dolphins and whales.  However the thought of spending a whole day on the big blue ocean made me reminisce about the previous boat journeys that ended with me feeding the fish, so we decided to skip that tour.

Our next stop would be the hillside town of Hanmer Springs. This is a small town situated inland and we would spend 2 nights here enjoying the peace and quiet. A nice hostel with a great feature...free ice cream! Hanmer Springs has a series of large thermal pools, so we decided to check them out in the afternoon.

Views from Hanmer Springs walk

We enjoyed a few local walks round the surrounding hills, these were some steep tracks, but again worth it for the views.

After this brief stop we were finally heading south towards Christchurch, our last few days ahead of us and we were already starting to get sad about leaving. We went to Christchurch and went to the iSite to see what we could and couldn't access (due to earthqauke damage). We had seen the paper that morning and it had a shocking headline about Christchurch. Since the initial major earthquake in September 2010, it has been 500 days and 9,500 earthquakes. That's just hard to comprehend.

We walked towards the centre of town towards the "red zone" an area completely cordoned off to the public and where buildings are still being assessed as to whether they are fit for use or have to be pulled down. Even outside this zone, there was obvious large scale projects of building works, demolitions or salvage works. The most impressive were where they were trying the salvage the older building facades and features. A hard task!

We then walked to an area that I absolutely loved, a local project called Restart. This was an urban regeneration area to give the locals a place to go to and see that life is still possible, even though the heart of the city has gone. The project is a series of shipping containers that have been assembled to create a shopping area, from coffee shops, to banks and shoe shops. A great idea, nicely executed.





We headed into the main park and gardens, only a short walk, but a world away from the devastated downtown. We met up with Joe & Emilie, who we had previously travelled with, who lived in Christchurch, but were leaving the next day back for the UK. It was nice to catch up with them and see some familiar faces.

After saying our goodbyes to Joe, Emilie and to Christchurch we drove about 1.5 hours to Akaroa. This was one of the first places that we stayed in the south island (all those weeks ago), but loved it so much we decided to spend out last few nights in the mighty New Zealand there.



We stayed in the centre of Akaroa this time, where before we had been on the surrounding bays. We filled our last day enjoying the quaint little village of Akaroa and took in some more views via a 2 hour walk in the surrounding hillside.

And then it came....the dreaded alarm clock waking us up on the last morning in New Zealand. The bags had been painstakingly packed the night before, not to mention the astonishing amount of crap that we had accumulated in the hire car over the past 6 weeks. It was a wonder how we managed to fit it in to our 2 main rucksacks. So with our last goodbyes said to Akaroa, we took the leisurely 2 hour drive to Christchurch airport and dropped off the hire car.



Before we knew it we were checked in for our first of 3 flights in the coming few days. Our first, a small internal flight from Christchurch to Auckland, then the longest flight of our trip; Auckland to Los Angeles.

What can I say, thank you New Zealand, it's been emotional.

PS - we'll be back, don't you worry!!

"Packhorse Kipper" carrying BOTH our bags !