Our campground in Oamaru adjoined the city botanical garden. Our tour guide last night said it was one of NZ’s best gardens, so we took a walk through it this morning. We were very glad we did, because it really is a special place. They have a wonderful area for children (note the SpongeBob and Humpty Dumpty photos), a section with exotic birds, a beautiful greenhouse, a Chinese garden, and many flowering plants, trees and fountains.We drove through town to...

We took the opportunity of being in South Island’s largest city, Christchurch, to do some shopping for items to use in the campervan. We also shopped at a large grocery store. We are really limited in space in the refrigerator, or I would have stocked up for a week. As it is, we can only shop a couple of days at a time. We did buy a small cooler and some ice bricks for beverages. We're good to go!The four hour drive to Oamaru was scenic; lots of pastor...

It's hard to believe that we've been here a week already. We were on the road by 6:30 AM for the five hour drive from Wanaka to Christchurch. We drove for two hours without seeing another vehicle. It was a cloudy morning, so the lakes did not look as blue as they did last weekend. We arrived in Christchurch in time to do some sightseeing. Christchurch is described as the most English of NZ's cities. We visited Victoria Park and watched punting on th...

Today we drove through "Lord of the Rings" country. Of course all NZ was probably used in one scene or another of the trilogy, but much of LOTR was filmed in the Lake Wakatipu area. Our first stop was at Arrowtown. Arrowtown was a gold mining settlement in the 1860s and it has been restored. It is a quaint little town full of shops and restaurants. We enjoyed our coffee break at the town bakery.Then we went to Queenstown which bills itself as the "adventure capit...

Today we visited Mt Aspiring National Park, which is the third largest of New Zealand's Parks. We stopped at the Park Visitor's Center and picked up the brochure, "Walks along the Haast Highway," which was very helpful as we drove the 140km section of Hwy 6. We drove beyond Lakes Wanaka and Hawea, through rainforests and along rivers. Our first nature walk was into the Makarora Bush, a primeval forest of silver beech and podocarp; it included a pitsaw dis...