Nov 16th – You know the vacation is almost over when you are heading off to your last stop. The quick way from Oamaru to Christchurch would be up the coast, but we’d heard from many people that the inland route is much more interesting. Why do a 3 hour boring drive when you can do a 6 hour interesting drive?

There were three stops within the first 80 km, to see some ancient wonders. Our first stop was to see the Elephant Rocks, which are massive limestone formations on private farm land. For those who are fans of C. S. Lewis, this was the location for Aslan’s camp in The Chronicles of Narnia. A little further along the road we stopped to see some fossils that had been discovered in some of the limestone rocks. Because they were just pieces and not a whole animal, they were left exposed so people could see them, rather than removing them. The third stop was to see the Maori paintings which reminded us very much of the Petroglyphs out near Peterborough.

After a brief stop at a wayside picnic area for lunch, we headed up into the mountains towards Twizel. This area borders three lakes which have all been created to generate hydroelectricity. Lake Benmore is the largest man-made lake in New Zealand; the Benmore Power Station the second largest power station after Manipouri (at Doubtful Sound). Our B&B host in Te Anau, the professional rower, had suggested we stop at Twizel to see the rowing centre which is where the National Team trains and where they hold many international events. Since it’s currently the off season, there really wasn’t too much to see.

On to Lake Tekapo which is a tiny mountain town – really a sporting centre (skiing, boating, fishing, etc.) From the edge of the lake you get a wonderful view of Mt. Cook on a clear day.

On to Geraldine, a little town that many people had indicated was a must stop. We arrived just at 4:30pm to find a very busy town square. Saturday was their annual Arts and Crafts show, which unfortunately was just closing down. After a brief stop we decided to move on since all the little shops were closing too. We’d love to go back to explore Geraldine a bit further, but we’ll likely run out of days.

From there it was an hour in to Christchurch and we were happy to find our apartment and get settled in. We are just a block away from the red zone (basically the central business district) and the view from our balcony is quite devastating, but more about that later.