This morning we awoke in our camper van at the Glentanner Park Centre campground to fridged temperatures. At the nearest town reporting temperature the current weather was 35 degrees, and we were up the hill from there, so likely in the high 20s.
But the sun was shining on blue skies, and we could finally see the surrounding mountains clearly, and Aoraki/Mount Cook stood out prominently even from our location 20 minutes from the park entrance.
We packed up and headed out, aiming to make it to Christchurch in time to comfortably return the camper, get our one day rental car and hopefully get into the city for dinner.
On the drive towards Christchurch we passed the vibrant turquoise waters of Lake Tekapo, a place we definitely want to visit on a future trip.
We then passed through the town of Geraldine, another town that deserves more exploration, continuing on our way towards Christchurch. About two hours later we pulled into the Novatel Airport hotel, which is as close to the airport as you can get without being in it. Infact our room looks out over the tarmac so Reef was having fun checking out the different planes right from our room.
After dropping bags at Novatel we returned the RV, then picked up a much more reasonable mid-sized SUV to use for the next 24 hrs. After the RV the SUV drove like a dream for Sharyl, and parking was suddenly no big deal.
We got a recommendation for dinner so headed to Welles St in Christchurch. Our destination was Winnie Bagoes a pizza spot, but there was a 30 min wait so we stopped into Muy Muy for an appetizer and a margarita- both of which were excellent. Welles Street turned out to be a really happening area, there was a great cycling shop on one corner, a running store, some great looking restaurants, a package free grocery store called Good For, something we’ve frequently wished for in Hawai’i.
The pizza was good, but not great, next time on Welles Street we’ll stick with Muy Muy for dinner. However at Winnie Bagoes I was able to try a new NZ brewery - Panhead Custom Ales - their Rat Rod Hazy IPA might have been the single best beer I tried in NZ.
From dinner it was back to the hotel and the end of our last full day in New Zealand.
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