4/8/10 (hanmer springs)

Hanmer Springs - Christchurch

A bit of a sad day as it was our last day in New Zealand. It was incredibly cold the prior night in the camper and we were looking forward to the upcoming night in a hotel. We got a late start on the day cleaning out the Hippie. We went for some lunch in Hanmer Springs. It was a nice little town built around their hot springs and reminded me of a ski resort village in the US. After a quick bite, we hit the road. We passed through a beautiful mountain range that I wanted to try and capture on video. New Zealand roads aren’t always the best and when we pulled over on the sloped highway we were instantly stuck in the middle of nowhere. The nice thing about New Zealand is that almost everyone is really friendly and helpful. Within five minutes we had a handful of people on the roadside to help us and we were on our way to Christchurch. 

We had booked a hotel at the library in Kaikoura and you never know what you are going to get. The hotel turned out to be pretty nice and met our three requirements: clean, good shower pressure, and free internet. After a little difficulty finding the hotel we unloaded our gear and headed out to return the hippie camper. It was pretty sad moment. We had grown quite fond of our little camper van. The only real damage was a pretty massive crack in the wind shield. Fortunately we had maxed out on the coverage. The return lady was really nice and helped us line up a ride to the Christchurch airport. When we got back to the hotel we started our laundry and pack up. I downloaded the latest episode of Lost and got caught up with the blog posts. We also tallied the amount of money spent in New Zealand. Ouch! We will put up a blog post on the damage shortly. 

New Zealand was an incredible experience and vastly exceeded my expectations. It was tough to pack up but we look forward to our adventures in Australia. We went to bed early to get ready for our 3am wake up call for the ride to the airport and our next adventure. 

Comments

[Mary Lappan]

You sound very sad leaving this beautiful place. But hopefully new adventures to come. Safe travels.

[Hilary]

Glad you had such a great time in New Zealand. Loved reading about your experiences there and look forward to hearing about your new destination :)