|
 We followed the advice of Dunedin locals and stopped off at
the Moeraki Boulders, which was a good lunch break on the drive to Christchurch. They are interesting rock formations and Arnie had fun exploring them. The local tourist brochures
give both the geologic reasons for them and the Maori legends associated with them. We will save our "balls of the gods" stories for the pay for view section of this report (coming soon to an XXX rated megasite
near you).
 We continued on to Christchurch and our last night in New
Zealand. We had reservations at the Charlotte Jane, a B & B near downtown. As we drove down motel row we started to get nervous but when we turned into the Charlotte Jane's
driveway we knew this would be a gem. It was. The Charlotte Jane is a rebuilt old girls school. It is a first class hotel with
third class prices. It has great rooms, a wonderful restaurant in a glass greenhouse, and good phone service that enabled us to catch up on email and pay some bills online. Highly
recommended if you are in the neighborhood. We had a pleasant meal and some good wine from the extensive wine list.
 We shared breakfast the next morning with Siegfried Lindbauer who turned out to be the owner.  He is a German who has worked and lived all over the world and
settled in Christchurch with his wife, Moira, whom he met in Singapore while living there. He told us all about the renovations and how he had been building a new wine cellar. He
gave us a tour of the wine cellar and we now have some ideas on what we'd like at home. An interesting man who has built a gem of a place to stay. Now, we need to figure out a way to get him to visit Ridgefield...
As we were checking out, Larry had another of those travel coincidences. It seems like you enter a different world on trips like this and meet people doing the same thing, sometimes just in a different order.  Two women were checking out at the same time as us and were
leaving to stay that night at the castle in Dunedin. As we talked more it turned out that they had just flown in from Sydney and had stayed in the same place we were flying to
stay in later that day! All three were small, out of the way places, and here we were on exact reverse itineraries. We exchanged tips and went on our separate ways.
 We only had a couple of hours to spare before we were to leave for
the airport and Australia. We drove downtown and found that the Sunday market was underway around a couple of the churches. We found a few interesting items to add to our collection of locally
produced souvenirs. The downtown area was very attractive and we decided as we left for the airport that we would like to spend a few days here in the future, staying at the Charlotte Jane and exploring
the pleasant little city.
We got to the airport and concluded our driving tour of New Zealand without incident after driving on the wrong, oops, left side of the road for almost two weeks. We left the sunny
South Island of New Zealand and began the next phase of the adventure.
|
