Day 9 - Relaxing in Hanmer Springs

Our roadtrip continues, we left rainy Greymouth after having a very nice dinner last night at one of the "secret" restaurants in town, Ollys' Restaurant. I only knew about this due to online reviews, they don't have a website or even a sign on the road. To get to it, you have to walk through a TAB and bar.

We had a seafood (fish & scallop) chowder as a starter, then the fish & chips (due to unavailability of the kiwi grill meal) and the seafood dish of the day which was crusted snapper with rosti.

Today we left Greymouth, it was still raining and the driving on those curvy mountain roads was a little exciting at times. Due to the weather there are also not many photos. Thankfully the drive to Hanmer Springs wasn't too long, only about 2.5 hours.
We even thought we spotted some kiwis on the side of the road (the bird kind, not human kind) but upon investigating it turns out they must have been something different.

The closer we got to our destination, the clearer the sky became. In the early afternoon we arrived in Hanmer Springs and checked into our motel. We checked out the hot springs in the afternoon by having a private hot spring spa. Simone had a massage afterwards, it was all very relaxing.

Panorama:

We decided to go for a basic pub meal in the evening and went to Monteith's Bar & Grill, where it happened to be $20 steak & mash night. Simone had the pork chops.

Tomorrow we drive on to Kaikura, where we are booked in for whale watching.

Day 2 - We're leaving on a ...... jet boat!

After a very satisfying 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep we got up around 7.30am. Checked out of the motel, filled up the car ($2.20 per L) and had a quick brekkie at the local bakery. By just after 8am we were on the road to Queenstown, our destination for the day and home for the next three. It's one of the stops where there is so much to do and see we are staying for more than one night.

Simone was driving for some of the time, until she could feel herself becoming too tired so she handed over to me.

Once again we stopped several times to admire the scenery and take photos, or to check out some places. One of those places was the Wrinkly Rams, where we came just in time to see someone training their one year old Border Collie in herding sheep. Commands were mostly different whistles and for a young dog I think she did quite well :)

I took some video as well.

After Simone bought a few things from the shop we continued on our way. Another ad-hoc stop was the Gibbston Valley Cheesery. Part retail outlet, part cafe, here they tell you how cheese is made and you can buy a variety of their very delicious cheeses (they are a bit pricey though) as well as lots of artisan foods and food related items. On their menu I saw a cheese & chorizo baguette, which I had to taste and thought would be perfect for lunch!

It had two different cheeses, chorizo, baby gerkins and a sweet chutney in it. Yummo! Simone had a few bites too and the local dog also got some bits that fell out. She was very gentle.

Some photos of the drive. Something I didn't take photos of was the salmon farm. They sold fresh salmon for $18.90/kg. I almost turned the car around :)

About 20 minutes away from Queenstown we stopped at the Kawarau Bridge, the home of the Bungy Jump. It was here almost twenty years ago that I made the jump 43m down. We watched a few people go and Simone was in two minds about going but said that there were too many people watching and she wasn't wearing the right clothes blabla, excuses excuses.

Arriving in Queenstown we located our hotel and then drove into town to check things out. On a whim we decided to do a jet boat tour, neither of us had done it before. It was very cool, zipping along the river, swerving in and out and doing 360 degree spins. Thankfully those were announced so you were never taken by surprise.

Simone with wet hair afterwards. It was her choice to sit closest to the water...

We had dinner at the hotel. This time Simone had the lamb shanks and I had the special, which was salmon. Funny thing, we looked at the menu and Simone said "with all this salmon in the river there should be salmon on the menu". Two seconds later the waiter brings the special :)

Food was nice, Simone reckoned the shank I had yesterday was a bit better.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a crappy day weather wise, with thunderstorms a possibility. The activity we booked: half day walk. Great. But I tried contacting them today to confirm and also arrange transport and I still haven't heard anything, so we'll see what happens.

Day 1 - Arrival in Christchurch and drive to Lake Tekapo

The trip didn't get off to a good start. We arrived early at the airport so we could pick our seats, as there was no online check-in available for whatever reason. Got the counter with the baggage nazi - we were told explicitly that the allowance is 23kg and 7kg for hand luggage and you cannot under any circumstances go over that. My bag was 23.3kg and my hand luggage 7.2kg.
Thankfully Simone's suitcase only came to 18kg so her majesty found the mercy to allow the bags because the total was still under. But we had better make sure that next time the bags cannot go over!

We were also told that we cannot pick seats as we should have done that when booking the flight. News to me and it meant we could have been there a lot later. Oh well.

The plane was a smaller plane so it didn't have any Hobbit paintings on it. Lame! Strike 3.

And to top it all off our flight was delayed for an hour due to the plane encountering heavy head winds on its way to Perth.

So when we finally made it onto the plane and sat down, it looked like our trip was under a bad sign. We'll see. The food was surprisingly good, so that was a plus. But I'm not sure that eating at 3am Christchurch time would help with the whole jetlag situation....

Our pilot announced joyfully that "we're making great time" and of course I immediately thought of George from Seinfeld when he announces in the car that "we're making incredible time here!". That mean that even though we were delayed we arrived slightly earlier than planned, at 6.14am.

Immigration, baggage, money changing (should have done it in Perth for a better rate!) we got out of the airport at around 7.30am and took a taxi to the car rental place which was only 5 minutes away.

One after the other, staff rocked up to work and ignored us and another couple standing in front of the office. Just walked past, no "good morning", nothing. At 8am a guy comes out and starts checking in returned cars - again, no "you may go in now" or any kind of acknowledgement. When I went in the woman at the counter was nice, but again - is it so hard to tell customers you're open?

We picked up our car for the first part of the trip (need to change cars when we catch the ferry to the north island), a Nissan Tiida. 98,000 on the clock, no cruise and no audio connection or even CD player. I guess that's why they are cheaper.

We then made our way to a shopping center where I had located a Telecom shop (similar to Telstra in AU) so we could get our phones sorted and online. That shop didn't open until 10am though so we spent some time getting drinks and sitting around the shops. Major mind blow - the bank (Westpac) opens on sunday. Full service. Do you hear that Australia? A country with only slightly more than 10% of the Australian population can afford to have banks open sundays!

When the Telecom shop finally opened, the girl there was very helpful and sorted me out with a special 3gb data deal and Simone got a basic txt, call and 500mb data prepaid. The sim cards were free.
No fucking around with settings like in the US, just put the card in, activate the account and it all just works. Nice!

Upon leaving the shops it rained, but after driving a few km it cleared up and the weather was back to a gorgeous sunny 23C. The drive to Lake Tekapo took us about 4 hours with a stop and plenty of slow vans. But we arrived safely and that's the main thing. We checked into our accommodation at the Lake Tekapo Motels and Holiday Park, where we had a twin suite (hut). Exploring the area and visiting the Border Collie statue was next.

Towards the evening we decided on a place to eat, both of us now really tired since basically had been awake for around 30 hours. So we had dinner at 5pm at Mackenzie's Bar & Grill. My original plan was to have Fush and Chups and take it back to our hut and eat it with the view in front of us, but the local shop was closed and the one that was open was like a jack of all trades place - so we decided to give that a miss.

After dinner we went home and Simone is happily snoring in bed while I try and keep my eyes open writing this. It's almost done!

I had the lamb shank with veggies and mash

Simone had the short rib with mash

We shared a serve of sweet potato fries, they were nice! They have a different name here which I cannot remember.

Friendly ducks walking around the huts.

The water is crystal clear! But you know what that means....

It is frikking freezing!!!!!! My feet almost fell off. It was definitely less than 10C and some people were swimming in there without a wetsuit. Crazy!

Nice panorama shot of the lake from the beach.