Road to Edoras (in a campervan)
We arrived in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon, never a good time to visit a city but we headed down to the CBD (Central Business District). I knew that there were road closures due to the damage caused by the earthquakes but didn't realise the whole CBD was cordoned off. We could only look through wire fences to see a true ghost town. It was very sad as from the pictures Christchurch looked a vibrant city but the city had lost it's soul. We saw grafitti on some old buildings saying "we will save you" and other messages calling for a new mayor and governors. As there was not much to do we had an early night.
The following day was very exciting as we were picking up our campervan. Once the obligatory paperwork was sorted we were taken to our 'van. It is huge! We've splashed out on something that is bigger than we need but it's going to be great. We have our little (mobile) home for three weeks and the backpacks are getting banished to a cupboard for the entire duration.
We had ordered a bike rack and two 'recreational' bikes with our 'van but these turned out to be rusty old things that looked like they had seen better days many moons ago. A short drive to Natural High and we left with two nearly new Specialized Bikes, a Hardrock mountain bike for me and a ladies hybrid for Nilgun, complete with sprung and suspended seat for her delicate bottom. Before leaving Christchurch we dropped into a huge supermarket (regular by UK standards) and stocked up. In one day the Mastercard had taken quite a battering!
New Zealand has been used for filming many epic films, but none more famous than Lord of the Rings. Nilgun is a huge fan of the books and the films so it was appropriate that our first destination was to one of the sets from the first film - the location of Edoras. This meant very little to me but when we eventually arrived the scenery was pretty awesome. We were miles from anywhere and anyone so it seemed the perfect location to spend our first night of freedom camping. After a lush dinner we watched the first film from the trilogy and it was quite cool looking out the window at Edoras.
The following morning we wanted to head south towards Dunedin but we opted for the longer inland route taking in a few of the many Southern Lakes. Some were created by glaciers in the last ice age and have truely magical colours, turquoise blue just doesn't do it justice. A detour to a salmon farm to pick up some smoked salmon and we were on our way again.
We had a a long driving day to get down south but the fantastic scenery en route made the drive pleasurable and not a chore. However doing no more than 85km/h on some empty winding roads made me hanker for my VX220, mothballed back at home (thanks Dad!). Once we reached the coast we found a good spot on a hill overlooking the coastline.
In the morning we awoke with a lovely sea view but when we left we figured out we had camped on private land -- oops! En route to Dunedin we stopped to have a look at the Moeraki boulders, a strange collection of spherical boulders that litter the beach. To understand exactly how they are formed requires several PhDs in geology and physics, but they make for great photos!
