A leisurely breakfast followed by a frantic packing and checking of bags was our start to the day. We headed back to Westfields as we departed our accommodation to pick up some bread for lunch and the all-important morning coffee 😇 Zac and Belle like a babycino, here they are called “fluffies”…

Around the corner from the airport is the Antarctic Experience. We enjoyed three hours there learning about Antarctica, seeing penguins and husky dogs up close, a 4D movie, and riding an all-terrain vehicle called a Haggland. It was a great way to spend our last few hours in NZ, and consolidated for Zac and Sam a unit of work they had done in term three on Antarctica. 

We then returned our bus to the drop-off point and checked in with Air New Zealand. They have reduced staff and introduced self check-in. However, the terminal gave us an extra boarding pass and too few bag tags, and then the scanner at the bag drop stopped working. It took three staff to help me complete the check-in process after all, with the result being I am not very impressed with their system!!

Anyway, we had plenty of time to relax at the airport, near a playground and with free wifi (ie. all ages of our children covered 👍). We even ran into the Bowdens in the retail area, who arrived the same day as we did and are leaving the same day, albeit on a different airline.

It has been a great ten days, and the measure of a successful holiday for me is that everyone has a different list of favourite things (as well as safe travel, no illness and suitable weather of course). The weather has been fantastic – before we left, the weather forecast said Queenstown would rain for the whole week, but we have only seen sprinkling on the way home from Milford Sound, have enjoyed perfect weather and no transport problems. (I didn’t even break Ross on this trip by including too many kms each day!)

From Ashburton we headed straight to Christchurch this morning, a further hour and fifteen minutes along the road. We decided morning tea in their botanic gardens would be nice, but people were everywhere and parking was unattainable! We left the city centre for our accommodation in Riccarton, via the Westfields there to pick up some milk and sushi for our lunch. We were able to access our accommodation at 12pm, so we unpacked and had our lunch before we set off again.

We headed back into the city centre for a tram tour of the city. It was actually quite depressing to see the extent of the devastation the earthquakes caused. 70% of the city was affected, and the driver’s commentary as he pointed out many sites and points of interest was always peppered with “they’re going to fix that soon, it will cost $x million”.

Once we disembarked the tram, we headed over to the Cardboard Cathedral, which was built after the earthquake to replace the previous church of Gothic stone that crumbled with the tremors. The street behind that contained an artistic structure called the 185 empty chairs, a monument to the 185 people who lost their lives in the earthquake of 22 February 2011. One problem: I live with several maths nerds who felt the need to count the chairs,only to discover there are 186!! And the maths nerds live with some OCD-ish wonderful people, who find that disturbing! 

From there we travelled to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, suggested to us for a Maori experience. (Thanks Aunty Beck, it was great!) We did a guided tour that showed us kea and kiwi birds up close, fed some eels, and watched a Maori show – a great cultural experience. The kids picked Lone Star for their last dinner in NZ, which was just up the road from our accommodation, and we were back in time to repack and sleep.

After reading the riot act yesterday about taking too long in the ONE bathroom we are ALL sharing and upsetting the teenagers (actually the young adult was the only one to take it personally 🙄….), everyone worked hard this morning to get ready to depart quickly. The result was we were sitting outside the Cadbury Factory half an hour before it opened for business!! 😳😂

I had booked us into the 9am tour of Cadbury World, which came with extensive information, samples along the way, and a bag full of various products. As often as I told the kids to stop eating the chocolate in their bags, their tour guide kept encouraging them to indulge!! 😳😩 Every time I turned to check on them, Sam looked a little greener and Belle’s cheeks were full and her bag a little emptier. I was so concerned one of them was going to be car sick!  

At the end of the tour, we left Dunedin for Timaru. It was a long drive, but by 1pm we had pies from a local bakery and were enjoying a picnic in Timaru Botanic Gardens. After lunch we drove another two hours to Lake Tekapo and the Church of the Good Shepherd. It was very beautiful scenery, although I think we have said that at least once on every single day of this holiday! 

Ross was pretty tired and sick of driving by the time we left there. Our plan had been to get as close to Christchurch as we could, so at 5.45pm we reached Ashburton and called time. I negotiated an absolute bargain on a three bedroom apartment in a little motel, where the receptionist even offered to dry my washing for me! (Yes, I am washing again….). Being a Monday, there is not a lot open in town so we returned to Speight’s Ale House for dinner (salad and roast vegetables were highly sought after given our second breakfast at Cadbury World….). Sadly, there is only one full day left of our holiday 😕.

It was interesting to start the day as visitors at Dunedin City Baptist Church. After attending the 10am service, we drove back into the city for a lunch of Subway and headed over to Olveston Historic House, where I had prebooked a 1pm private tour.

Having done this tour last time we were in Dunedin, I knew they would ask if anyone played the piano, as they need their Steinway grand piano from New York played regularly to keep it in tune. Jarrod was lucky enough to play, and I was lucky enough to once again appreciate the fruits of many years of lessons we have paid for! 😉 The kids enjoyed the tour, and our tour guide Kevin was very patient and willing to answer all our questions.

We then drove 25minutes away across the Otago Peninsula to Lanarch Castle. Equally as beautiful, with wonderful scenic views, this is New Zealand’s only castle. Built by William Lanarch, the family sold it and it was abandoned twice until the Baker family purchased it in 1967 and have spent the last fifty years renovating it. We enjoyed our self-guided tour of the buildings as well as time in the extensive gardens.

As we returned to the city, we detoured via the steepest street in the world, Baldwin St. The little three were very keen to climb it, and I was keen to hold the bags and jackets while they did. In the end we all climbed it at our own pace (which is my polite way of saying they waited for me back at the bus!) – around 300 steps up a street at an incline of 19 degrees! 😳

Back at our apartment, Ross went grocery shopping while I did some washing (I found the laundry building at the back of the complex here). Not much is open here on a Sunday, so Ross bought some KFC for dinnner and found the NRL grand final on our tv, which has made the boys very happy! 

We were up and out of Te Anau just after 9am this morning, headed for Invercargill. It wasn’t in my original itinerary but Ross remembered visiting it last time (19years ago!) and I remembered a historic clock tower that we could visit.

Over two hours later, we arrived in Invercargill, a much bigger city than we remembered! The clock tower was the centre of a roundabout, impossible to look at, so instead we went to Queens Park for morning tea and a game of frisbee.

Ross had read a brochure yesterday about The Catlins, a southern scenic route along the bottom of the country and decided we should explore that on our way to Dunedin. It was beautiful scenery, sometimes through farmlands, sometimes along the coastline, occasionally on gravel roads. There were no major towns though with decent food options, so I was drip feeding the kids the snacks in the car along the way – and now need to shop again!! Over a six hour trip, they ate no lunch as such, but had grapes, mandarins, Grainwaves, choc chip cookies, almonds and gummi bears. Another #proudparenting moment….

We visited along the route a lighthouse at Waipapa Point (almost the southernmost point of the South Island), Purakaunui Falls (the most photographed waterfall in NZ), and another lighthouse at Nugget Point. The scenic route ended at Balclutha and it was then another hour to Dunedin from there, which we reached at 6pm.

Our accommodation at Dunedin is nice but basic – it’s a three bedroom apartment so we are all together, but there’s only one bathroom and the laundry is elsewhere in the complex. And the wifi is not great, so my photos are not uploading. We are a block away from the University of Otago, so Ross and I feel we are really bringing up the average age in this suburb! 

A lot of my research before we left home was about Dunedin. The Ale House attached to the Speight’s Brewery had good reviews for its meals, so we went there for dinner. The booth we were given had views of the AFL Grand Final, so the boys enjoyed that. 

It was still light when we finished, so we went to admire Dunedin Railway Station (above), before returning to our accommodation where we watched tv for the first time this week – I still don’t know which party Winston Peters helped into government, but we watched some local rugby, a show on Christopher Columbus set in Florence, and “Sing: China” – not a normal Saturday night for team Jones…😂