Southern-Alps

13th December 2009 One of my second cousins lives in Christchurch, so today we had arranged to meet up with her and her boyfriend Hayden for a spot of lunch. We were experiencing another dry day, so after they picked us up, we headed out towards Banks’ Peninsula. There we stopped at a place called Sign of the Kiwi at Port Hills, from here we had a stunning views across Christchurch to the Southern Alps in the distance. We took a short path around the hillside and enjoyed the views over Lyttleton Harbour in the other direction. ...

4th December 2009 Another good nights sleep after all the exhilaration and fresh air of yesterday and our luck with the weather seems to be changing, since despite our fears to the contrary, today has been another sunny, cloudless day, albeit with a cooling breeze. One of the things we learnt yesterday on our tour was that before man arrived in New Zealand, the only mammal it possessed was a bat, hence the high number of flightless birds in the country. It seems like the majority of NZ’s native species are endangered or under serious threat all due to introduced species like the rat, dog, possom and stoat. ...

23rd November 2009 This morning we picked up our campervan which is to be our home for the next two and a half weeks. To be brutally honest, we weren’t exactly enamoured of our little van when we first saw her, she was much smaller than we had envisaged and while she did have the advertised shower and toilet, the toilet is little more than a portaloo. I don’t really know what we expected, but this is it for the next little while. Also Ed can’t actually stand up straight in it which means I’ll be doing the cooking for the next couple of weeks, so from his point of view there is a bright side :). ...