Day 1: Fly Auckland to Wellington
We were greeted by our good friends Bill and Maria who will put us up and feed us. There is lots of Kapiti Ice-cream in the house for me.. (P.s I love ice-cream)
Day 2: Wellington to Christchurch via Picton on the ferry
We stopped at the Store (http://www.the-store.co.nz/) in Kekerengu which is a beautiful place to stop and a delicious place to eat! Driving down to Christchurch we passed Ohau Point (on the coast) which has masses of seals. You could see the baby seals staying away from the big males one. I’m told that male seals are quite the dominant aggressive kind and if they feel threatened bye bye to you. Weather wise today was brilliant, lots of sun and if you ever head to NZ you’ll need to slip,slop,slap on your sunscreen!
Into Christchurch we arrived where we saw some of the devestation from the earthquake. Walking past houses where you can see the ground drop is quite astonishing. The houses in the area we were staying in would mostly need to be demolished due the liquefaction. Liquefaction just looked like sand but of course it means that the soil now is more like liquid then substance, definitely not what you want to be living on.
Day 3: Drive from Christchurch to Lake Tekapo.
You aren’t able to drive into the city centre but we drove past the Cathedral of the Blessed Sentiment where you can see the devastating effects of the earthquake. We drove past the city centre as vehicles are still not able to drive through.
A long drive to Lake Tekapo where we were going to go to the Mt John Observatory only to be told that the weather was too bad. Lake Tekapo has the cutest church overlooking the Lake and of course you can see some mountains behind.
Day 4: Lake Tekapo to Queenstown
Leaving Lake Tekapo we did have breakfast at the Astro Café which is atop Mt John which gave amazing views of the Lake and mountains beyond. After breakfast we made our way to Mt Cook/Aoraki which is New Zealand’s highest mountain. A very beautiful place in the summer and I would love to go visit there in the winter time.
We made our way to Queenstown at a slow place stopping for lunch in Twizel where there was unfortunately no time for Mini golf.