Christchurch

I'll back peddle a tad here to describe our time in Christchurch that didn't involve getting a van sorted out.

We arrived in the city center from the airport hassle-free as usual. It was Sarah's turn to sort out accommodation while I waited in the main square (Cathedral Square), and minded our backpacks. Well over an hour later she got back after going to 4 different hostels, all of which were completely full. All she could manage to find was an 8-bed dorm for the first night, and then a relatively expensive, but very comfortable, ensuite private room for the following 2 nights, all in the BASE backpackers right on the main square.

The city wasn't hosting any big event of anything, so this was my first indication that we had arrived in New Zealand during high season. In fact, over the better part of the following two months 'No Vacancy' signs were extremely common, and the fact that we had our own van must surely have saved us no end of trouble finding accommodation (certainly cheap accommodation anyway). I suppose it might be just a reflection of New Zealands overwhelming success in recent years in terms of tourism, helped in no small part by the Lord of the Rings of course.

So over those three days we strolled around the city, which I thought was lovely. The river through the city and botanic gardens is lovely (although we never found time to hire kayaks, which was a pity). The city has a nice cafe and bar mix, including a very cool, but overpriced, Belgian bar (as the Lonely Planet observantly points out, Belgian bars seem like they might be the world's next 'Irish Bar' phenomenon). We splurged as usual in the restaurants, and I was very impressed with Cook'n'Gas, very disappointed with Dux de Lux (which basically seemed like a self-service canteen!), very impressed again at Indochine (the best wonton I've ever had), and when not splurging we had no trouble finding great lunch deals in lovely Indian restaurants.

Although it was high season, and the weather was brilliant, the whole town still seemed rather quite, especially in the evenings (although it might just be a case of needing to know exactly where the 'in' places are, as opposed to my strolling around and expecting to just see them). But I still can't help compare the night life of cities I visit to Dublin - nowhere on this trip has come anywhere close to the general buzz and excitement that Dublin produces every night of the week (so far, Wellington has come the closest).

Anyway, sorting out a van turned out to be more fustrating than I'd expected, and after 3 days we still had nothing. So we tried to extend our stay in BASE, but they were completely full up now. We had to pop across to the tourist information office, and after about 45 minutes of the very helpful girl ringing about 30 places we finally got a place to stay, which was a good walk outside the city center (and the first night I had to share a dorm room while Sarah got a single room).

So after another two days of van hunting and strolling around museums and cafes we finally agreed to rent a van (as opposed to buying one). The guy we dealt with seemed very genuine, and wasn't pushy in any way, and because we were taking the van for so long we got a great price (although we hired the van during high season, we would have it right through into the low season). It was a great relief to see the van only had 71,000Km on the clock (some of the vans in the 'van market' had 300-400,000km), and they had also just put on four brand new tires, which was a comfort after our puncture episode in Namibia. So with everything signed up we drove away with our new van - which was to become our home for the next 3 months.

So the next morning we checked out of our B&B place, used the Internet for a few hours, got a very cheap, and very lovely, Hare Krishna lunch, went to the supermarket to stock up on supplies and hit the road to find out what New Zealand is really all about.