Day 14: What goes around comes around

Christchurch, New Zealand

Motel restaurant coffee is rarely good, and today’s was no exception. We decided to stop along the way for a further caffeine fix. After a couple of false starts, we stopped in Rolleston, which is, I guess, a newish outer suburb of Christchurch, or satellite town or whatever it is. The coffee was better anyway.

We decided to go to Lyttelton, because we had time and it was on our original list of places to have a look at. It was supposed to have some nice little shops and be a pretty, scenic place. We had a look around but didn’t see anything that made the trip worth it. Slabs thought that the tunnel to get there was the highlight of that trip. Maybe we missed the good bits.

Back on the road to Christchurch, where our trip started just two short weeks ago, for our last afternoon in New Zealand.

We parked in one of the public car parks that must have once been a building, but is now just rocks, and went for a walk. We wanted to have a look at the Re:START mall, which we saw briefly last time, which is the mall made from shipping containers. It’s very bright and there are lots of cool shops and little food outlets. After spending a bit of money, we were ready for lunch. Slabs and Kramstable chose an outlet whose EFTPOS only took local cards (like, what kind of a thing is that? How does a freaking EFTPOS terminal know where your card is from? Why does it matter? Why would you have a payment option that international tourists can’t use?), so that wiped the last of my New Zealand currency out.

I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant nearby, which was really good (and they did take my card).

After lunch we went to the motel – the same one we’d stayed at the first night we arrived – to check in and chill the last of our New Zealand beers. We’d thought about doing the jet boat, but decided on something a bit more relaxing instead, and booked a ride on the River Avon punts. It was a lovely way to wind up our trip, with a 30 minute ride up and down the river, with a very finely dressed young punter to tell us about the river and all about punting. I could get used to that.

The boat ride was over all too soon, and it was time to do a test run to the motel where we’d be dropping off the rental car in the morning – if we’d known that’s where we’d have to return it when we were booking accommodation, we’d have booked there for tonight and dropped off the car tonight, but not to worry. It was easy to find, and their staff would shuttle us to the terminal once we’d dropped the car off.

Back to the room to start packing. We had dinner at a restaurant in a motel a couple of blocks away rather than go back into town, and then all we had to do was set an alarm, a backup alarm and another backup alarm (just in case) for 3.30 am. We also have a wake-up call booked.

Hooray?