Sorry for the delay in this post... we were a little tired last night! It's around 8am here on Monday morning now. Yes, I am up at 8am. One of the neighbors closed their sliding door and woke me up. And we went to bed pretty early yesterday, so I'm well rested! And excited to get on with our day!
We made it! Safe and sound. We arrived in Christchurch on time and hopped a shuttle to collect the campervan. Our first extended experience with a Kiwi was certainly interesting. Let's just say that she is well suited to working in a rental shop.
The campervan is really nice. Not the largest supply of hot water, but all the Holiday Parks (Kiwi for campground) have shower facilities we can use. (And did we ever indulge last night. It felt so good to get the plane grime off!) We're a little shy on cupboard space, but have managed to find a place to put all our clothes so we aren't living out of suitcases. We'll post pictures in a bit.
We had a bit of an adventure finding our campground. The lady at the rental place gave us the wrong block to look for it, so Ryan got a bit more experience driving on the left side of the road than necessary. The only map we have of Christchurch at the moment is of the major roads and isn't to scale, which makes giving directions interesting! We had another brochure with a better map of the immediate area around the holiday park that we pulled out that showed us we were a block off so we weren't aimlessly driving around in circles for too long. I think we'll stop at a service station and pick up a better map of Christchurch and one of Auckland and Wellington as well. We have an atlas of New Zealand that gives us directions in most of the cities, but those ones are too big so we only get the downtown in a map (and holiday parks aren't in the downtown area!).
It's an interesting experience driving on the left side of the road. I've been struggling to not tell Ryan off for turning into the wrong lane... when it's only me that thinks it's the wrong lane. Christchurch is beautiful. It's still spring here, and everything is SO green!
Once we'd figured out where our campground was and had booked the site, we were off to the grocery store. We've only got a mini fridge and very limited cupboard space, so we had to be careful what we picked up. A friend who's been here before told me to check out the crisp flavours, as they are pretty insane. They have most of the regular ones (but no ketchup), but also Lamb and Mint, and Hamburger. I'm not sure what I think of Lamb and Mint potato chips, and, while we didn't buy any this trip, knowing how much Ryan loves lamb, I wouldn't be surprised if they find their way into the camper before we're through. They also have some fabulous looking jellies that were tempting my taste buds, but stayed on the shelf. We weren't too sure how much space our essentials would take up in the fridge, so we weren't getting extras this trip. We did pick up some beer while we were there. I'm starting to feel more and more like I'm in an English speaking Quebec. No turning on red, and booze in the grocery store!
We have everything squared away in the camper now. No living out of a suitcase for us! Ryan made us a simple spaghetti dinner last night, and then we went to bed. Today we hit the road and head down to Oamaru to see the blue penguins.