Honeymooning around the world: Last 3 places in NZ: Hanmer Springs, Akaroa peninsula and Christchurch

We are a bit late with our blog. We are now sitting in a plane flying through Kuala Lumpur to our next destination, Indonesia, and still writing about NZ… Well, it’s actually a quite tough job to write, especially when we have been changing places quite a lot. Now we are going to have some holiday from traveling and just relax in Indonesia. But now back to NZ. As we wrote in the last post, we were making knives and that we were a bit worried how long it would take to finish them because of the power cut. We had still to drive to Hanmer Springs that night. We finished early enough so that we manage to arrive to HanmerSprings around 9 pm. We checked in to a really nice hostel, Hanmer Backpackers, and had dinner.

The next day we just made a short, 2 hour walk to a viewpoint on the top of a hill. It was a walk in a forest and it reminded us a lot from the forests back home, even if there were similar but totally different trees with huge pine cones. After our walk, we went to check out the town center, but there was not much. It is a nice and cozy town, though! We found one store that sold handmade fudge so we went there. The lady in the shop was really friendly (like almost all of Kiwis) and she gave us quite big samples to taste and quite many as well. We bought few cubes for us and few to Anki and Jocke who let us stay in their home in Sydney when we go there.

Familiar trees

The pine cones are growing in strange places on the tree

The center of Hanmer Springs 😉

In the evening we went to the thermal pools, the main reason why we came to Hanmer Springs. We had found tickets to the spa from Bookme for half price, so we paid only 11 NZD (7-8€) each. It was a nice place. There were many different pools with different temperatures. We stayed mostly in the pools that had at least 37c. Most of the pools were real thermal water so they contained a large amount of different minerals, and every now and then we could also smell it 😝 We had some water massage and enjoyed having a bath in 42c.

Edda getting a bit of water massage

The next morning it was time to move again, but before we left, we gave our sleeping bags and chairs to the hostel so they can give them to someone who needs them. Our next stop was in Akaroa peninsula, close to Christchurch. We had found a quite cheap Airbnb from the middle of nowhere. We noticed that it was also a MTB bike park, so at least Markus would go biking a bit.

The check-in was a bit late so we decided to go first to Akaroa town. It was advertised that there one could see dolphins. Well, there you could not see them, but one could go on a boat tour to see them for a “cheap” 150NZD price. We walked around the town, had coffee and just enjoyed the weather. When we left, we took a scenic route. We got nice views over the town and sea.

We had got detailed instructions how to find the Airbnb. All the maps end few kilometers before the house. 😝 The last part was a really steep road up to the house. There was a funny dog also. There was no signal or mobile internet so it was for real in the middle of nowhere. The couple living there was also using rainwater as their water source. Markus went biking both days for few hours. We went also for a walk but other than that we didn’t do, just some job applications and blog.

Walking on the hills of Akaroa peninsula

Markus went mountain biking

After the bike park, it was time for the last stop. Three nights in Christchurch. We drove a short sightseeing route before we went to Christchurch. There we stayed also in an Airbnb. The check-in didn’t go so well. We had to wait for two hours because the host was working and when we came at agreed time, we had still to wait for an hour to get in the house when the host’s wife came to open the door.

We saw some art work on our sightseeing

Resting during our morning walk

We went into the city for coffee during the two hour wait. We had heard that the city is quite destroyed after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes but we didn’t realize it would be just a big construction area. In the evening we went to have some dinner, but we left a bit late so it was a bit difficult to find a restaurant with the kitchen still open. Finally we found one, and it was actually a quite nice one. It had also interesting details such as an old sowing machine as a water tap and they delivered the food in pressure pipes 😃 We took a three-slider combo and all of them were delicious, not big but really good. We had hoped they had been bigger because we were quite hungry. Well, it was just enough not to be hungry anymore :)

Nice water tap!

This could be called real fast food! 😂

The next day was not the best. It was raining and we had to return the car. We had driven a bit over 6000 km during 5 weeks. Wrooom wrooom! 😝 We were amazed how easy the return was. We just drove to Ezi car rental, went to the office and a man just asked if we are going to airport or city and that he can drop us to a bus stop. The only thing he checked was the gas level. Nice! We got back to the rainy city and went to QuakeCity, a museum about the earthquakes. It was rather expensive, 20 NZD each, but many had written that it is worth it so we went there. There was a lot of information, photos and a one hour video of interviews from the survivors. Some had lost a close one, some fingers and some just been trapped or looking for their loved ones. It was a really touching place and there we understood how big the earthquakes had been. We started to think how a poor country survives the quakes when it takes about 20 years to re-build a relatively wealthy city. The center had suffered the biggest damages and around 70% of the center had collapsed, has been demolished or is waiting for demolishing. The center is for real a big construction site.

Pictures after the quake. Not a nice sight when you go home...

It's 6 years since the quake and there's still many buildings waiting for demolition or re-building

There's also a lot of new buildings under construction

Hooray! The next and the last day in NZ was sunny and we went to the botanical gardens. It was quite big and we spent few hours there. After that we headed to Re:Start Mall. It was a fast-started mall so that the local shops would get a place to do business. It was built from big containers and it looked really nice and cozy. A big surprise - Edda found again real fruit ice cream! 😝 On our way back to our house we walked by a family play park. It was an interactive park and there were many water “toys” to play with. It looked like a really nice park for children, and why not for adults as well.