I’m starting this post with a description about the image. Angus took this photo on our flight from the North to the South Island. The narrow strip of land that you can see is actually Farewell Spit – a 28km long sandbar, shaped like the beak of a kiwi bird, at the top of the South Island. It was at the base of Farewell Spit that Angus took the photo that won this trip 🙂
On Thursday 28th Feb we had to say goodbye to our campervan as it was time to fly down to the South Island (the flight was preceded by a night in an airport hotel in Auckland and a round of adventure golf – guess who won).
The South Island part of our trip was a new experience for us – a structured 6 day trip involving coach travel. It’s not something we would usually choose to do, but as it was part of the prize we decided to see it as a different sort of adventure!
Our first night was in Christchurch, at a motel in the suburb of Riccarton, which is an area we’ve stayed in before. It was good Scottish weather when we arrived, so instead of going into the city centre, we sniffed out the cheapest pub and got chatting to the locals.
The pub was a sports pub, of which there are a lot in NZ. It’s not like the sports bars we get in the UK, which have 15 big screen TVs showing football, but rather a pub with a few TVs showing horse racing, along with a counter where punters can make bets. Horse racing and betting is really, really popular in NZ.
We met Daryl, a hard working construction guy who liked to talk about the geology of NZ and also some of the other people in the pub – like the old guy who liked to bark at a woman who jogged past at the same time everyday and the local ‘bin jumper’ who chose to live on the streets and wear a dressing gown (or bath robe, depending on where you’re from). Then there was the photo wall of bar staff and customers in nude poses (from the back) in various locations, including Uluru (Ayres Rock). An interesting crowd.
Anyway, we didn’t stay too long as we had an early start the next day for our TranzAlpine train trip.