On Boxing Day we had a nice relaxed time at Rod and Mieka’s. We had a game of tennis on their back garden tennis court in the lovely sunshine; Andrea narrowly won. Afterwards we packed up and headed into Sydney to be dropped off at our hotel. On the way we called into Rod’s office building and enjoyed the magnificent view from the 25th floor, looking over the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We said goodbye to Rob and Mieka and checked into the Syd...

Today we took the van to the depot near Christchurch airport. It passed all the tests, i.e. it was clean inside, was full of diesel, empty of loo and no additional bodywork features, so the only thing we had to pay was the fuel tax. From what we understand, diesel is not taxed very much in New Zealand at the pump, but the campervan companies are charged tax, which they pass on to the customer. From our notes the tax only applied to campervans with a toilet and sh...

Today we decided to give Christchurch another chance as we hadn’t had much luck the previous day. So we got the bus into town again, but the weather was still not great; we were even thinking that we should have put our thermals on! So we just spent time in an internet café before wandering out to some department stores out of the city centre. If we had known these shops were so far out of the city centre I don’t think we would have bothered go...

Today we caught the bus into Christchurch. We didn’t have a plan for what to do in Christchurch. We’d read our guidebook and there were lots of nice things mentioned, but nothing that really captured our imagination. Even a visit to the visitor centre didn’t provide much inspiration, so we did what we do best and went shopping... We found a Holden dealership near the centre of town as we wanted some souvenirs with our surname on, but we didn&rsq...

Sort of rejuvenated after our day off, we left Dunedin, heading north to Christchurch. But before leaving Dunedin we stopped at Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest street. We were thinking that it couldn’t possibly be the world’s steepest street as the streets of San Francisco are steep, some of them having steep cut into the pavement. But the sign says it’s the world’s steepest street according to the Guinness Book of Records, so w...