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Day 10 – Christchurch / Akaroa

Drove to the Christchurch city centre this morning for a look around – very pretty – and then to check out Paintball – which was unfortunately closed (much to Jamies disgust).  We then drove the 76km to Akaroa – a little town south east of Christchurch which is built on a bay which is part…

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Day 9 – Wanaka to Christchurch

Planned today to just start driving towards Christchurch – stopping along the way, and see how far we got.  I expected to get no further than Fairlie – but, even with 3 or 4 stops, we found ourselves there at 12:30 – so decided to keep going onto Chrstchurch – another couple of hours. Considered…

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Day 8 Queenstown to Wanaka

Just a short drive to Wanaka today (70ish Km) so we had a bit of a lie in (although the clocks changed to daylight saving so we lost an hour overnight too) –  had bacon, eggs & frenvh toast to breakfast, and headed up over the Cardrona Pass – which still had a fair amiunt…

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Day 7 – Queenstown

Very early start today – 6:30 for our full day Dart River Funyak Safari – a 1.5hr Jet boat ride, followed by a few hours kayaking safari.  However, the rain started in earnest at 0500 and was VERY cold, so I was a bit concerned that it would be a cold, wet, miserable day.  As…

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Day 6 – Te Anau to Queenstown

Planned to have a relatively lazy day today, with a short drive (170k) to Queenstown.  We had a 7:30 start and stopped along the way again for breakfast and at a couple of other places for a look (e.g. Devils Staircase – where Rory nearly got blown off a cliff).  Arrived in Queenstown around 11:00…

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Day 5 – Doubtful Sound

We had a late start this morning… the tour didn’t leave until 10:30 so had the luxury of a lie in (until 8:00 anyway) and pancakes for breakfast… yum. There was a whole crowd of us picked up from Top 10 – mostly aussies – and for that matter mostly QLDers (which is not that…

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Day 4 – Dunedin to Te Anau

We had a fair bit of rain overnight (it was nioce to go to sleep to) but woke up to a glorious sunny, crisp morning. Today is probably our longest planned drive – 290km according to Google – and pretty much spot on according to the odometer.  We had  a resaonably early start leaving at…

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Day 3 – Dunedin – Chocolate & Wildlife

Busy day today… 1st up was the obligatory tour of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory . we were on the first tour of the day and it was fabulous.  Love the smell of chocolate in the morning…  Very interesting tour of how they make it all (although we couldn’t take cameras) – plenty of free samples…

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Day 2 – Geraldine to Dunedin

Had a surprisingly comfortable sleep, and woke at 8:00am…. pretty much headed off straight away down the road to Dunedin – a 233km trip that Google reckons should take us 3 and a bit hours…..Took me a while to work out how to start the Diesel engine (needed to be pre-warmed – which I didn’t…

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Day 1 Brisbane – Christchurch – Geraldine

Well… day one over… the boys are off to bed … and I’ll not be far behind… knackered with a splitting headache. Arrived at Brisbane airport 7:30am… the place was mobbed .. start of the school holidays I guess, but surprisingly managed to get on the short queues, for checkin, security AND customs … awesome……

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