Day 60

Early wake up, had pancakes before packing and cleaning our mess. Putting rubbish out and leaving the key in a flower pot, we left at 10am. It was already hot as I drove I realised that we forgot our food in the fridge… After a quick back and forth, we finally left and went to Ashburton I-site. The lady gave us maps and walking ideas. Sadly, we drove a long way to different areas and most of them were disappointing. The Wakanui beach was OK, no walks, just rocks and tsunami/earthquake warning sign. Unfortunately we had to drive all the way back to Ashburton to reach Lake Hood… a very artificial and rich suburb. We decided to head north to the mountains, hoping for a decent area where we could walk. The Awa Awa Rata Reserve was far and confusing but finally nice! It was so hot though and sand flies were around. We did a 1h30 loop through the hilly reserve. At Rakaia Gorge, we made a stop. The wind had picked up quite strong and it was much cooler. The gorge water was blue grey but nice. The walkway was crap though, only interesting point was a little hole through the cliff (which jack scratched his back on).

We kept driving to a little town Glentunnel where we saw “tunnel walkway.” We started the track, which was very confusing as one sign was saying “authorised personal only.” The walk was through farm fields, up a hill and leaded to nowhere (no tunnel apparently!). We headed down disappointed and made our final drive to Christchurch, our last destination before settling down for a bit. We luckily found the big park in the middle of the town which had a lovely historic garden. Lots of art pieces were standing around and the weather was a little cooler. The rose garden was nice but sadly the DOC and I-site were closed. We couldn’t also visit the conservatory so we planned to do that the next day. We walked to town and saw how still damaged Christchurch was. Lots of buildings closed to access and plenty of demolition/construction sites. The cathedral was highly damaged from the earthquake of 2012. The rebuilt university was quite pretty but still not fully open. We drove a long way south, following a wikicamps campsite after Governors Bay. It was just a car park near the muddy bay. We had dinner and enjoyed the sunset, pretty tired from that long day driving around cities.

Entree Written By Marianne