8th July 2009

We were awake by 6am, checked in and sat in the que waiting to go on the ferry. Once on the ferry we went upstairs onto the main deck and to sit in the cafe area. The ferry wasnt too bad, a bit choppy at times. It took 3 and a half hours. We both spent most of the time sat in the cafe, we fell asleep for a while then got some food (free toast!). Once we arrived in Picton we had to pay a visit to the car mechanics to access our vechile as we had a "small incident" getting onto the ferry! So after the mechanic had a look it turned out we had to take a small detour (8 hours!) to Christchurch and back to swap our vechile over for another one!

The drive was very long and very hardcore but the scenery was absolutley amazing. We were driving between massive valleys, with the ocean on our left and massive snow capped moutains infront of us. Part of the drive was rigght along the coast where hundreds of seals were just chilling on the rocks, we stopped to take some pictures, there were little fluffy grey baby ones, they were so cute!

Picton to Christchurch took around 5 hours and we had 4 hours to get to the depot in! I drove the whole way and we were on a complete mission. I wish we could have filmed us bombing around these cliffs and mountains, where the roads snake for miles with 50m plus drops by the side of us! All the cupboard doors in our camper were swinging open and things were falling out, it was so funny. Then about 45 mintues away we suddenly realised our petrol light came on...we were in the middle of nowhere, heading into the middle of nowhere and were very close to breaking down! We passed through a couple of tiny towns with no petrol stations, then we found one, wohoo, they had no petrol, argh!!!! So we kept going about 20k, expecting at any mintue to come to a stop. We decided we would walk to the nearest house and hope a farmer lived there and had spare petrol, lol. We came into another small town so pulled in there but still no petrol, this was killing us!! Mike ended up knocking on a random persons door to ask where the nearest petrol station was and luckily for us (someone must have liked us today!) it was only 2k away. WE MADE IT...JUST!!!

NOTE: If you have any less than a quarter of a tank fill up as soon as you see a petrol station!!! You can go for miles out here without there being one!! LESSON LEARNT.

So back on track and we were going to be late! 10 mintues later we were at the depot FINALLY!! We had to fill in some paperwork then we moved all of our stuff over into the new campervan (still called Trev!). Luckily we took out full insurance thank god, otherwise this would have cost a fortune!

So after a near miss at being stranded in the middle of nowhere, we made it to the depot, changed vehicles and all was good! It was late and we were both shattered so we stayed at a campsite very close by for the night!!

Another very entertaining day in the Adventurous travels of Amy and Mike!!

So we havent yet really seen christchurch but we are heading back here for the day before we leave for Fiji!

24th July 2009

This morning after no sleep we drove 80k to Christchurch, the weather was still bad but the roads were much better than yesterday so we took it steady and made it ok! As we were both so tired from not sleeping last night due to the massive storm and it was still chucking it down, we decided to pull up in a campsite and sleep!! It is so cosy in our camper when it rains, and much better when we arent on the edge of a cliff! So today we havent done much apart from driving, sleeping, washing and starting to pack our stuff for Fiji.

25th July 2009

This morning we drove into Christchurch centre and parked up. We took a walk through the botanical gardens to the town centre. Its saturday so there are a couple of markets which we walked around. Christchurch is weird, there are some really old buildings and then some areas are very modern. It is quite a big city but fairly quiet considering its saturday! We have no money left so havent really done much other than explore the past few days! We are going to relax and chill for the rest of the day before doing our final pack tonight. We fly at 1pm tomorrow to Fiji.

The End of New Zealand...

We have had such an amazing time here, definately our favourite country. Partly because we had an awesom campervan which allowed us to drive where we wanted when we wanted. Also because we did a SKYDIVE, BUNGEE JUMP and SNOWBOARDED, things we had wanted to do for so long and did all in 3 weeks!! Parts of New Zealand are beautiful with scenery which you wouldnt see anywhere else. It is fair to say we will be back here again for a holiday without a doubt. We spent alot but it was worth every penny!!!!!

Love New Zealand !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fiji is our last stop, we have 10 days here, we are hoping for some good sun to relax everyday on the beach and catch a bit of a tan, so fingers crossed. !! x