We caught a plane to Christchurch on Monday morning, and it was surprisingly a breeeeze to get through security. I was allowed to leave all my clothes (including my shoes) on through the metal detector, took a bottle of water through, and the craziest part of it all was that I was never ID'd. Only when we checked in did they ask for our passport. Other than that, someone else could have been Kailee and/or Logan for the day and flew to Christchurch! We got to our gate only to hear an welcomed voice over the PA system announce our flight was delayed due to bad weather in Christchurch. Not a good start to our trip! Over the next 20 minutes, the Christchurch airport had closed & reopened again and we were back on schedule. The airlines didn't waste anytime; everyone boarded the plane, and we were off. Somehow, we miraculously got to Christchurch only FIVE MINUTES after our scheduled arrival!
Our first stop and most important was to get our Jucy Chaser campervan! A Jucy camper picked us up, and drove us to the dealership. After some wheeling and dealing about insurance, diesel fuel tax, and a few other practicalities, we jumped in our Jucy and were off! I must say, Logan did a GREAT job getting us from one place to the next. You won't believe how many kilometers/miles we drove, but I'll save it for a later time to tell you ... create some suspense :) We drove up North for about two hours to Hanmer Springs, a small town with award-winning hot pools. To our surprise, three of our friends from Hamilton were in the exact same place at the exact same time as us! There were about 20 different pools we could have chose from, and we all ended up in the same pool! The scenery was really nice and we relaxed for a while in the nice geothermic hot pools! It was great! We went to get a quick bite to eat with them afterwards and then, we continued on to the West Coast.
We got to Punakaiki at about 6ish and got a quick dinner and tried to find a place to sleep. We didn't want to pay to stay at a motor camp, so we tried to find a "freedom camping" spot. We saw a local campervan parked along the coast, so we pulled up next to them for the night. All around BAD idea! It was absolutely freezing! The wind from the ocean went right through our windows and we nearly got hypothermia, which also made it hard to fall asleep, for me at least. At about 9:00, I thought I heard some footsteps outside our van, but thought nothing of it. In the morning, we woke up to find someone had drawn a Swastika right infront of our van! How nice. I was pretty scared, so we jetted out of there. Since then, our nights were vandalized-free! Phewph!
In the morning, we headed over to the Pancake Rocks. It was a 20 minute walk to see all the rocks. Definitely worth it! They were created 30 million years ago underground, and earthquakes have brought them up.
Here's our pictures from our whole South Island Adventure (of course not ALL, there's a ton!):
South Island
South Island 2
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