Back on the road...

After a day of searching around, we found our future campervan last Monday at the local car market in Christchurch, a 1985 converted Toyota HiAce van with an interesting if somewhat bright paintwork... suffice to say I don't think we'll ever lose our van in a carpark! It took a few days to get it ready for us to take - it needed a full service and a few other things doing to it, but by Wednesday of last week it was officially ours!

And we were good to go.

Our first port of call was Akaroa, a little French settlement, a 1.5 hours drive east of Christchurch. The windy mountain roads were a challenge for Charlie (we named our campervan...) but he managed it and got us there safely. We spent our first night in Charlie that night, parked up near some public toilets near the iSite - it was certainly cosy with the 3 of us in our campervan bed, but it meant we got to keep warm... perhaps sleeping in our van during the winter months wasn't the best of ideas!

After Akaroa we headed back to Christchurch for a few hours to sort out a few things and then it was off to Lake Tekapo, the drive was beautiful - snow capped mountains lead the way to the lake, which we arrived at just as the sun was setting. Our 3rd night in the van was absolutely freezing, so we decided that we'd opt for a hostel the next night on Mount Cook, a fantastic idea considering the fact that the 3 of us hadn't showered since we left Christchurch 3 days earlier and when we arrived at Mount Cook Village, there was a good foot of snow on the ground. Hot showers, a full kitchen to cook in, being able to spread out in bed... the luxuaries of hostel life were not lost on us.

After Mount Cook we headed back towards the coast, stopping at a few little villages along the way (little being an understatement, Twizel was a village that was meant for demolition in 1984 and Omarama has a population of 360) before arriving at our current location of Oamaru - a quaint little historical town with beautiful old buildings and is famous for its blue and yellow eyed penguin colonies. Earlier today we visited the Whitestone Cheese factory and of course had a sample of their produce. The Whisky factory was unfortunately closed today but we did get to see some penguins of the blue and yellow eye-ed variety, which more than made up for it.

Tomorrow we leave Oamaru and head further south in search of more penguins, chocolate and beer.