Day 135, 136 - Christchurch, South Island - Tuesday 28th, Wednesday 29th February 2012

After a yummy breakfast at the airport and a turbulent 3 hour flight (worst flight ever according to Adam - I slept through most of it!), we came into the spectacular views of Christchurch and finally landed. After picking up our bags, we walked through arrivals to be met by Andrew from Cruzy Campers who was ready to hand over what would be our house on wheels for the next 6 weeks.

Out in the car park Andrew have us a comprehensive tour of the camper which took a little longer than we'd expected and so by the time we'd finished it was 8pm and we were starving. We headed straight for the local supermarket, Pak n Save, and stocked up on some essentials and dinner for the evening. With our shop done we headed for the local campsite to plug in, cook some dinner and get our first nights kip in the van. It took us a while to work out the essentials like plugging in the van, turning on the gas, putting water in, getting old water out etc, but after a bit of experimenting we were like old pros and had soon eaten our dinner and had got out and set up the bed ready to get some sleep. Here's to the first night's sleep in the van!

We were awake early today as we had to check out at 10am. It seems strange to us that the checkout times for a campervan are so early and late (10am check out but you can't check in till 2pm); it's not as if they need to clean a room or anything as all you are using is a parking space with some power!

We drove into town and stopped off at the supermarket again for a few more bits and then found ourselves a space for the camper. The plan was to park up and then follow the walking route recommended in the lonely planet; it was a 3 - 5 hour walk through the city and outskirts taking in the main sights. The hitch of this was that the lonely planet was written before last year's earthquake meaning that the majority of the route was now closed off due to demolition works or unsafe buildings; in fact it seemed as though most of the city was closed off or closed down. It gave the town a sort of eerie feeling and walking around really brought home how bad the earthquakes had been. Both Ad and I felt quite sad to see such devastation even after a year having passed since the quakes.

We finally found the Restart area of town; this is a little shopping complex that has opened since the earthquakes and is really quirky as all of the shops and restaurants are made from old ship containers! We wandered around the shops and grabbed a coffee before heading down the river and onto Botanic gardens and Canterbury museum for a look around.

Come afternoon we headed back to the camper and drove to the McDonalds car park to use their free Wi-Fi whilst we ate our non-McDonalds lunch (I think we are now officially travellers when we park up in the car park of a McDonalds just to use their Wi-Fi and do not even eat their food!!). Once done we started our drive out to Akaroa down through the Banks Peninsula. The drive took us just over 2 hours and passed some awesome scenery; after stopping quite a bit to take pictures we finally arrived just as the sun was setting at our free rest area on the side of the road and lake. There was just one other campervan there and as we parked up and started cooking our dinner a friendly Ozzie came over to chat to us. He gave us some tips on where to go and also said he had some food left over that we could have as they were leaving the next day - such a nice guy. The funny moment was when he asked how long we were in NZ for and we replied 6 weeks - to that he took one look at our campervan and burst into laughter and wished us luck! I think his final comment was something along the lines of that if we lasted 6 weeks in the camper, we'd be married for life!