Christchurch and Akaroa

We have had a busy few days in this area. After leaving the Hanmer Springs NZMCA Park we traveled into Hanmer itself to explore the township and what a lovely place it is. The scenery itself is very picturesque with the mountains as a backdrop, beautiful established trees throughout the town and some beautiful buildings and gardens. We shouted ourselves a coffee there and Bruce bought the inevitable – fresh bread and I indulged in a special purchase of some handmade fudge. We have been very good because only a small slice off one piece has gone so far. We have been so lucky in that the weather was fine and warm and I guess that added to the attraction of the place.

Leaving Hanmer was a bit slow as there was a motor vehicle accident just outside of town so all traffic was stopped while that was cleared away. We travelled through to Christchurch  where we had a bit of fun navigating to a laundromat but finally found it and got the washing done. We then headed to the home of Bruce’s work colleague, Dave and his wife Deb. They gave us a wonderful Vietnamese low carb dinner and we stayed in their driveway for the night.

It was another day of meeting friends the next day as we headed to Akaroa to meet with Bruce’s schoolfriend of 47 years ago, Pete and his wife Jenny who are also travelling around the south Island in a camper van (they live near Perth Australia). We were able to take the dogs on their first ocean swim of the  trip and we enjoyed a lovely lunch in the grounds of an old house that is now a restaurant.

We did not spend much time looking around Akaroa as we were with Pete and Jenny and the day was marching on so we decided to head off to our accomodation for the night, looking at a few places on the way. There is not anywhere to stay in Akaroa that will take dogs so we had to head back towards Christchurch.

On the way we had to stop at the local cheese factory, where we picked up a few delicacies for dinner – 3 way cheese (a small block of cheese that contains three different varieties), bacon jam, damson plum paste and some crackers.

Just near there was rental accomodation built from grain silos. We were quite taken with these and thought they would make great farmstay accomodation (Emma and Justin).

Next stop was Little River where there was an amazing little gallery. We cruised around for quite a while. I was quite taken by some police jacket bibs so I think my friend Janice and I will have to go into production of those. They weren’t cheap, at almost $30 each!

Our final stop was a little town on the outskirts of Christchuch called Tai Tapu. It has the most fantastic public library I have ever seen, as pictured below. This would be great at Flaxmill Bay!

The Domain at Tai Tapu a wonderful facility – lots of mature trees, plenty of open spaces for the dogs to play, and public toilets for our friends in the little camper. It cost us the princely sum of $5 per van to stay there. What really surprised us was that this gem of a place was not listed on any of the directories we had. We only found out about it through Bruce’s workmate.

Around the barbeque that night Pete produced on old photo he had of Bruce’s first wife, Sue, which Bruce had not see before so two of these photos were given to us to give one each to Emma and Daniel. It was sad to say good bye to Pete and Jenny the next morning.