July 30th (Thursday) - Day 151 - Christchurch, Auckland
Funnily enough it didn't snow. The driver was pulling our leg. Grrrr. It was quite a short bus journey today. Our only stop was in Geraldine where we got to see the world's largest knitted jumper. We arrived into Christchurch about lunch time. We had a good 4 hours to kill before we needed to get to the airport. We dumped our bags in an internet cafe and grabbed some lunch. Afterwards we checked out the winter festival in the main square. We spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around the shops and passing the time. At 4 we jumped on the 5 dollar bus (that now costs 7 dollars) to take us to the airport. We were really early and the evil lady at the counter would not let us get the earlier flight even though there were spaces; hence we hung around in the departure area for hours. Once in Auckland we jumped on a slightly more expensive bus which took us to our hostel. When we arrived we found out it was a remote check in (basically you ring them and they tell you where the key is). The problem with this is that they had only saved us one bed and not two. They had no other beds left. Not sure what was going on the lady told me to hang on and that she would be there within 30 minutes. Almost an hour later she showed up. Her plan was to install a camp bed in the room which was already quite small. For some reason I am not sure of; she made someone else sleep on the camp bed so that Sarah could have a comfy bed. Finally it was all sorted and we could get some rest. It's not a nice feeling turning up somewhere new, late at night and not knowing if you have a bed for the night.