Day 9 recap (Thurs Feb 17)

[Scott] We are both still sore from our hike on Tuesday. We can't stop thinking about everything we saw on that hike. We are enjoyed our short time in Christchurch. It is the largest city on the South Island with a population of 300k as I recall. Very different from Auckland. There doesn't seem to be any really tall skyscrapers. The square outside our hotel was really bustling with people going here and there. The weather continues to be really nice. Today is our day to go pick up the campervan, so we took the shuttle down there. I met a guy from Golden, CO (of all places) on the shuttle. He was on his way home from Antarctica where he works four months of the year as a researcher. His research is fascinating stuff - he said they extract the air from bubbles in the icesheets and analyze it to understand the contents of the atmosphere going back hundreds of thousands of years. Almost like tree rings. It's all part of their research on global warming. He said the ice is two miles thick in some points at the South Pole - pretty scary to think of all that melting! Christchurch is one of the gateways for aircraft to Antarctica, and there are many exploration museums etc in town. I now have even more of a fascination with visiting that continent someday. Anyway, we picked up the campervan, which took alot longer than expected but after a few hours we were on the road in our new home for the next 9 days. It's a diesel engine with a 5 speed manual transmission. Definitely a little awkward shifting with the left hand. It has a stove and fridge, a foldout queen size bed, and toilet and (cramped) shower. It's a year 2000 Ford with 200,000 km on it. By the way, we haven't seen too many American made cars here. We will be touring the island counterclockwise from Christchurch to Queenstown, where we will return the van and fly up to Auckland to catch our flight to Australia. After getting the van, we headed straight to the grocery store to load up our fridge and cupboards, and we started heading north. The drive was mostly through the hills and then we drove along the coast and around Goose Bay there was incredible scenery of the rocky coastline as the sun was setting on the other side of the island. We stopped at a nice little restaurant in wine country called Paddock House - pretty pricey and the service was slow, but the food was pretty good. We made a pact that we're going to try stopping before dark, and so we pulled off by the beach just a little after dark. We were just a little south of Kaikoura. Very convenient, no hauling suitcases or anything - pull over and sleep. Nice. Simple.