Tuesday 4th December – Arthur’s pass to Christchurch and the return to Auckland

Leaving the coast, it was time to drive through Arthur’s pass back across to Christchurch, a route that was as new for me as it was for Becks.  It was a very rainy morning but turned brighter as we travelled east:

The view in a section of Arthur's Pass

We stopped off at a few points of interest. Castle Hill was covered in an array of large limestone boulders which would have been great to climb and explore if time allowed: 

The massive limestone rocks at Castle Hill

Just me and a giant donut

However, we did make time to stop at the Giant Simpsons doughnut in Springfield (they couldn’t resist the promo there) and Sheffield pie shop which was described on our App as having ‘absolutely amazing pies!’ before tucking into massive ice creams for dessert.

We still managed to reach Christchurch early and it was like being in another country, it was so hot!  We decided on going for a stroll through the botanic gardens to experience some awesome flora before returning the camper.

Thankfully this process was a lot smoother than the collection, our final mileage coming in at 2190km. We dropped the keys off, someone came to have a quick lookover the van and we were away to the airport.

The rose gardens in the Botanic Gardens

What wasn’t as smooth, was our flight back to Auckland! In fact, it was bad enough that the pilot actually apologised for failing to avoid the terrible turbulence!

In between the turbulence there were some nice views

In the rush to get Simon back home as early as possible, I managed to pick up the wrong rucksack from the luggage carousel. I have never seen anyone else with my bright pink number, but on reflection, mine does have CORDEY written large and in permanent marker by the shoulder straps and I failed to notice this was missing!  About half way home my mobile phone started ringing and I found it hard to believe being told that my bag was still at the airport! We had to turn around and go all the way back, so ended up being really late home. Plus, I felt terrible for the poor girl whose bag I’d essentially stolen and who was therefore delayed getting to bed when she had a 4am bus to catch the next day! I won’t be doing that again… oops!