Oh Joy. Didn’t need to get up till 8:00am. Such luxury. Cases out the door by 9:00 for departure at 10:00am. This meant a real lazy start to the day and a leisurely breakfast. Another brilliant day and the mountains looked fantastic in the early morning light. Just had to take more photos. Even climbed a little. Possible as much as 50ft in altitude! What an adventure. Got a slightly better angle to take extra photos. There has to be a good one in that lot.
We boarded the coach and retraced the route south back to the end of Lake Pukaki but then turned East on Highway 8 and stopped off for more photos looking back up the lake to Mount Cook and adjacent snow-capped mountains. Continued on to Lake Tekapo and stopped at a lovely little church at the end of the lake (Church of the Good Shepherd) and a bronze cast statue of a collie (this was actually cast in London). More photos. We then continued and drove through Fairlie where we switched to Highway 79 and stopped in Geraldine for lunch. Found a nice little restaurant and I had a lovely Coronation Chicken salad and Val had a brilliant Quiche.
After lunch, rather than rejoining Highway 1 we took the inland scenic route up to Mayfield and rejoined Highway 1 at Rakaia. These inland scenic roads were the longest and straightest we have been on, and we have been on quite a few. The road ahead simply disappears into a vanishing point. We also crossed the longest road bridge in New Zealand, with the longest rail bridge running alongside. The road bridge measures 1.6Km if anyone wants to check and find a longer bridge! We then drove up Highway 1 through Rolleston and into Christchurch.
The whole round trip amounted to 1,500 miles. Not bad for a week. I missed driving through Sheffield. That is a small town East and a bit North of Christchurch. Oxford is only 19Km away!!! Haven’t spotted Cambridge but as punting is popular in Cambridge on the River Cam, Christchurch has the River Avon and so when we got back we had a punt on the River. Our punter was a Chilean Chappie from Santiago and we persuaded him to sing for us under some of the bridges where the echo makes it sound better. He sang us a Spanish song in Italian. Or was it an Italian song in Spanish. Not sure now. After the punt we had a cappuccino in a nice little place near the river. Just seemed to finish the day off nicely.
Now back at the hotel typing this up after a bite to eat. Will now download todays photos and see if there are any decent ones to post with the blog. Then I’ll add them in and save this and go and have a bath. All the hotels since leaving the Copthorne have only had showers. And you know how I love to soak away the cares of the day in a bath. Showers for cleaning, baths for dreaming.
From top to bottom we have a view of Mount Cook from the hotel and a shot of the Hermitage Hotel. Next we have Sir Edmund Hillary’s Statue where he is looking towards Mount Cook. Then the pair of us with Mount Cook in the Background and a shot of the whole tour group and finally punting on the Avon.
No comments:
Post a Comment