Christmas Eve, Eve. Rachael woke with many of her sand flies bites now maturing into big blisters, not good. With no option of staying on that site after another night of little sleep we had to move on (and not surprisingly so were our neighbours).
We thought we might as well approach Christchurch ready for Christmas and hopefully find a campsite en-route. Rather than do the 35 km round trip to Kaikoura for fuel we thought we'd risk to to the nearest station to the south, 50-100 km with the gauge reading empty.
Thankfully the 50km estimate was about right and half an hour later we got fuel, stressful. Again we went in search of a DoC campsite up a long dirt track for hours pitched up and the sand flies attacked, shame. There were a couple of walks leaving the camp so we went on one, returned and packed up the tent, while getting bitten, it would have been a long day locked in the tent if we'd have stayed!
Instead we drove, again, and found a "tourist park" (campsite but with extra facilities like internet, laundry, TV, pool), but the big bonus was no sand flies.It gave Rachaels blisters a little time to recover!
The site lead onto a huge beach, Tom went for a little swim although it was very cold, the guys surfing were mostly wearing wet suits, although it was warmer than Guernsey in October, sure Daisy would call it hot!