We finally departed Queenstown, after thoughrolly enjoying it and could of stayed there longer, and headed to the east coast. It was quite a boring drive as it was mostly long straight roads that was until we stopped to get the charger from the back, to charge our camera for the boulders at moeraki, and when we tried to drive off again nothing happened! We tried again and again but still the engine would not start, we started to panic and rang the camper people to tell them and the lady on the phone told us it was the battery. So Ash got into the engine and messed around with the wires on the battery and eventually he got it started. We then headed back to the nearest town to get a machanic to tighten the battery terminal for us and he did so free of charge (which I doubt would happen in england).

We soon arrived at the moeraki boulders beach were there are these huge, perfectly round rocks it looks really strange but very cool as you can see from the pictures. After messing around there for a bit and Ash falling into the sea trying to jump on top of one of the boulders we headed off to the town of Omarua, It was the first town in New Zealand and it looked just like England! Because it was like England we got lost because the streets weren't perfectly laid out in blocks like most other places. We found our campsite eventually and headed off to a beach were some yellow eyed penguins lived, we didn't dress apropratly (flip flops and shorts as usual) and were freezing and soon lost interest in the penguins and could only think of our nice warm campervan with the fan heater on with a cold beer and a film on, so thats what we did.

Our next destination was somwhere up north we weren't bothered where as there was nowhere that we realy wanted to visit but we wanted to get as close to Chistchurch as possible so the drive there would only be short the next day. So we stopped in a place called Ashburton. Becky did all of the washing so we had all clean things packed away and again just chilled out watched a film and had some drinks that night as we were both getting nervous about the next leg of our journey and after having the luxury of traveling accomodation we weren't looking forward to the prospect of carrying our bags again.

The journey to Christchurch wasnt too bad only about 40 miles so it didn't take very long and it was a really sunny day so we wanted to get to the camp as soon as possible and relax. We had a stop on the way to find were we would need to drop the camper the next day (as it was our last :-( Once we found the place we headed to the campsite, which was the only one we had been to in New Zealand that had a drive through campervan check-in lol. We went for a swim as soon as we got there, that's why we stayed at that site because of the heated swiming pool and we got some funny pics from the slide going into the water. We then had the daunting task of sorting out our bags as we had to throw some clothes and things away and make room for new clothes and stuff :) it took a few hours to do and it wasnt fun but we got it done and cracked open a well deserved can of bourbon and coke.

The next day we had to drop off the van but not until 3pm so we left the campsite and headed into Christchurch centre, well we tried to but it was all cordened off because of the earthquake damage as most of the city centre is still to dangerous to walk around. It was all quite depressing and inside restaurants the tables were all still set and some parts of the city looked like a scene from 28 days later. We walked through a little area where there was a big sign saying along the ligns of - if you enter this area you may be killed by falling debris from buildings, if there is another earthquake you may die, you need to carry ID on your body and tell someone you are entering the area, scary! We looked for the post office but found a massive hole and a broken post office sign, it had been torn down due to earthquake damage but no one had put this onto the tourist maps :OS There were also shops that had been moved into these shipping containers so that they could still operate. We got bored looking around at the devastation it was creepy like a ghost town so went to drop off our campervan. Ash also persuaded the woman to let us have a look into some of the bigger campervan to get some ideas because we want to build one now when we get home!

After dropping the campervan off at 3pm they gave us a lift to the airport where we had to wait there until our flight 15 hours later at 6am the next day. We got into the airport and was pleasently suprised as there was plenty of comfy sofas to sit on and lots of plug sockets to charge the laptop. We had some dinner Becky had soup and a sandwhich and Ash again had a Burger King for his last meal in New Zealand the same as the last meal in USA. soon after finishing our food we got ready for a long yet comfortable night that was until a cleaner told us that the departure lounge closed at 7.30pm and we would have to wait in the arrivals lounge which was cold and had a few seats not very comfy. Looks like a night sleeping on the floor for us!