Another late blog, too busy enjoying ourselves to be writing blogs on time, but here goes….
Monday (20 November), we did a little bit more gardening, before heading out for lunch with friends. That night Nic went out with our friend on the milk delivery round, as this is New Zealand, the milk round took 7hr including driving to Dunedin an hour away, finishing back home at 3am.
Tuesday, we left our friends and drove to Lake Tekapo, via Lake Pukaki with a viewing point for Mt Cook / Aoraki. We stayed at Lake Edge resort on Lake Tekapo. We had a dinner picnic sitting on the side of the lake, a beautiful spot. As Lake Tekapo is a dark skies reserve, Rog got up in the middle of the night to go star gazing. It was a clear night and you could easily see the Milky Way, but as this is the southern hemisphere the only constellation Rog could recognise was Orion, all be it upside down.
Wednesday, another glorious day, so we hired kayaks on the lake for an hour, we were the only people on the lake to start with, it was lovely. In the afternoon we walked along the side of the lake.
Thursday, we checked out and called at The Church of the Good Shepherd, before leaving Lake Takepo behind. On the journey, we stopped in Geraldine for lunch, and some retail therapy, Nic bought a Possum wrap (the wearing kind rather than the edible kind). We stayed the night at The Ashburton Hotel in Ashburton, a hotel on a race course, but no racing today. We had drinks and dinner in the hotel sports bar, Rog discovered jugs of beer!
Friday, we drove back to the car hire depot to leave the car, yes we did go back to the correct one, got a transfer to Christchurch airport for our Jetstar flight to Melbourne, Australia. Before any airport announcements Revolut (our credit card company) pinged us with a lounge access pass, which meant that our flight must be a least 1hr delayed, sure enough 10 mins later the airport updated the screens with a 2 hour delay. So we spent time in the lounge partaking of the free food and drink, unfortunately we were picking up another hire car in Melbourne, so less drink! Checked in with the Hire Car company, discovered they close at 8pm, so we’d probably miss them, hooray, time for a beer!
Got to Melbourne a couple of hours late, then had to run the gauntlet of the airport passport and border control, which gets the prize for the most disorganised we have been to lately. Inconsistent signage as to whether we had to use the electronic passport gates or the staffed lanes? We were told to use the E Gates, but before then we had to queue up to get a ticket? After baggage collection it was on to Bio security section, which entailed back tracking the long way around the baggage hall, to join a queue, then as we had been on a dairy farm recently we had to talk to another member of staff, before being given the all clear to enter Australia. All this meant we had definitely missed collecting the hire car. So we got an Uber to our friend’s place, and would go back for the car the following day.
Saturday, we got an Uber to the car hire depot, they were happy to change our booking by one day, so nothing lost! Apart from the Uber fares.
We then headed off to visit friends of friends for whom we are dog sitting next week in Sandringham, a Melbourne suburb.
We then checked into our Airbnb, a little way out of the city, but it’s cheap and only half an hours drive from friends. Nic and a friend then went to another friend for afternoon tea, followed by dinner back at our friend’s flat.
Sunday, after a lovely home cooked brunch at our friends flat, and a short walk around the local area, we headed for an early pre theatre dinner at a Nepalese restaurant, then watched a performance of a Christmas Carol, with more friends joining in. It was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit, quite tricky for us in the warm weather! It was another really enjoyable evening.
Travurple 