After an eight hour wait at Cairns airport, 3 planes and 2 taxi’s, we arrived at our guesthouse, Racecourse Backpackers Hostel in Christchurch. Our first impressions of N.Z. were that it reminded us of home, not solely because the guesthouse was on Epsom Road and next to a racecourse but everything else from the weather (tipping it down) to the landscape, however I’m sure this second similarity would soon change.
Our new campervan – later to be dubbed Myrtle – was like a dream compared to Sideburn our Spaceship hire car in Oz. Myrtle was full of all the mod cons, such as a toaster (heaven), kettle (luxury), 2 hobs + grill (brilliant) and a fridge (great but unnecessary with the sometimes sub zero temps outside!). Unfortunately the dream ended there as the rain continued to bucket it down and for the remainder of our time in Christchurch. To cheer us up, we did a little clothes shopping to help repel the rain and cold, and having had to suppress Emma’s favourite past time, clothes shopping definitely cheered up Emma no end.
It was at our trip to the city’s museum where we met the people who inspired the names for our campervans (http://www.newzealand.org.nz/fred_and_myrtle.htm), weird I know! Sadly Myrtle had a mechanical mental breakdown on our second night in Christchurch by deciding to turn on her lights, dash board fan and windscreen wipers at random. Being that there wasn’t anything we could do, the battery inevitably ran flat, meant trying to jump start the car come the morning. This wasn’t very successful to begin with, especially with Emma keeping her foot on the brake or leaving the hand brake on, whilst I was pushing. Luckily there was a hero in midst! A nice old chap called Brian came to our rescue with some jump leads, we were extremely grateful particularly as it would have cost us $140 to call out the AA. Having finally swapped campervans, myself, Emma and the newly named Fred were finally free to leave rainy Christchurch for the sunny West Coast via Arthur’s Pass.
Arthur’s Pass was like nothing we had ever seen and caused us to continually cry out wooowwww, as we would pass yet another waterfall, river or snow capped mountain range. Our stop for lunch in the snow was unintentionally very romantic, as our secluded surroundings consisted of a picture perfect stream, forest and mountains peaking over the horizon. Continuing our drive, we eventually made it through the mountain range and out onto the west coast, descending first upon Hokitika.