Great sleep on the beach campsite and woke to early morning surfers out catching the rips and curls. Plenty of good bods stripping off out of their wetsuits to persuade us to have our brekkie here. As they left one by one, we guessed to go to work, we packed up and drove back to Kaikoura.
Today was forecast for 28 deg and full on sun, however, there was a sea mist covering the sea and town, although warm it was eerily foggy. Thank goodness we weren’t on the whale watching trip today we wouldn’t have seen much.
We popped in to a local cafe for a cuppa and excellent blueberry muffin, using their wifi to catch up with stuff on the internet. As we were getting low on food and high in the loo tank holding we had the van service to complete and grocery shopping to do.
As we completed our chores the sun broke through and we drove around to Sandy Bay, the start point for all the whale watching boats we were coached to yesterday, and made our way around the peninsula to sit out for lunch in the sun and admire the scenery.
Our next destination is back over to the West side of the country as we are going to zigzag our way back to Christchurch in our last two weeks, going through Lewis Pass on the way West and next week over Arthurs Pass back to Christchurch. Both of these locations are going to give us some great walking opportunities and lasting memories of the mountains. Unfortunately, going West means…..Sandflies.
We took off West, stopping at a scenic picnic area on the side of State Highway 70 (!) to read this particular road had only been completed surfaced and wooden bridges replaced in 2006. The mayor apparently was highly delighted at the opening ceremony he had managed to complete what had originally started in 1906.
That’s what’s great about Kiwis, they never give up.
We rolled in to our freedom camp site for tonight in a back of beyond place called Rotherham, where a peaceful and scenic area had been fenced off slightly out of town, (on the way to the cemetery) and we laid out in the evening sun on shiny and verdant grass with the back doors flung as wide as they would go. One other camper drove in and Glenn interrogated the guy as he past us ‘are you self contained?’ and the response was affirmative. Phew, thank goodness for that. And he wasn’t driving a Jucy van either, another bonus. Both being a Jucy van and/or freedom camping in a non self contained van has certainly sparked rage within Glenn on many occasions as we have toured NZ.
As the sun lost its heat we stirred from our malaise and into some action. For the first time this whole trip, we sparked up the barbie!
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| Scenery on route |
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| Another spectacular NZ river bed. |
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| Kiwi farmers don't let a small thing like a state highway get in the way of driving their stock |
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| Yvonne and one of beloved information boards |
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| At last - the first outing of the barbie! |
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| View from the lovely campsite at Rotheham |
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