The parents Tiki Tour (day 1-2)

Hi everyone,

So my parents were in town for a week after Drea flew off to Ireland for a medical physics course (again, far to complicated for me to understand. Much less tell you about) Anyway, we decided to take rent a motorhome and take a Tiki Tour of the south island. (a tiki tour means basically a tour, don't ask me why they decided to throw in a tiki).

Day 1 - Dunedin to Christchurch
I dropped off Andrea at the airport on Thursday morning for her flight. What's amazing about catching flights in New Zealand (at least Dunedin) is that unlike the states you can get to the airport about 15 minutes before your flight and still get on board. We ran a series of errands before leaving Dunedin city (20 minutes from Dunedin airport) about 40 minutes before and got there with plenty of time to spare (oh yeah, plenty ;-)
From there I drove home, picked up Mom and Dad and headed out to Christchurch. We booked a night at the Chateau at the park (the swank hotel that Opus put me up in a few months ago for a training course) and were hoping to get there with enough time to use some of the amenities. Along the way we stopped at the Moeraki Boulders and marveled at the near perfectly spherical rocks along the beach. Yeah, rocks. We had a very greasy dinner at the Red Rocket, a church that had been creatively converted into a restaurant with an outer space theme, in Timaru. And then we arrived at the hotel around 9pm a bit on the tired side. We had a drink at the bar and planned our attack over the next few days before going off to bed.

Day 2 - Christchurch to Hokitika
In the morning I took off to go check out the campervan while the folks explored Christchurch. The camper (sorry, campa) had three beds, bathroom, kitchen and, of course, a steering wheel. Here's our sweet ride...

I picked up the folks around 11:30 and headed out of town to begin our adventure. We drove up through Arthurs pass on our way to the West coast. Our first stop after leaving the canterbury plains was Castle rocks. A series of rock formations that were along the side of the road.

From there we headed up the road to Arthur's pass village. The highest town in all of New Zealand (have you ever noticed how things in New Zealand are always "The highest" or "the first" or "the tallest" something or other, just an impression) Just out of town we took a little hike up to a place called Devils punchbowl. It was a nice little hike uphill that culminated in a beautiful waterfall. Here's a pic of us at the top.Devil's punchbowl
On the way up.

Our next stop was for a short Nature walk at Dobson's pass. The pass and the monument there were named after a surveyor, Arthur Dudley Dobson, the first (there you go again) European to discover the pass to the west coast. It actually snowed on us while we were up there.

Dobson's monument

A difficultly constructed section of the road through Arthurs pass

We arrived at our campsite, Lake Mahinopua, just a little ways outside of Hokitika. We cooked up a nice meal for ourselves and played some Cribbage before settling in for the night. Or at least trying to. It took about an hour of jostling around tables, cushions, bedding, dishes, and people, with about half an hour of intense giggling, before finally being able to crawl into bed.

So far an excellent start to our adventure.... Stay tuned.