recent events in Paris add to me feeling uneasy with some luxury-travel-questioning I am currently having. E.g. I regret the title post "surviving the flights" , for I do feel there was nothing survivor-like to it. We are a healthy family travelling by choice for our pleasure. We have the luxury to think about our luggage, destination, occupation,.... And then make the best out of it. No rushing out of the house, leaving everything behind, ignoring with pain in the heart the terrified looks in your kids eyes, taking essentials in one bag, then running for your life... Risking your life and that of your most precious ones... Hoping for better, safer,... Now that would be worth a post headline 'surviving flights') , we are - should I say I am - having the luxury travel questioning in our campervan on a cold Monday evening, with my four roomies asleep, at least three of them snoring - crazy enough the 3 male roomies of the family ;-)
We arrived in rainy Christchurch Wednesday evening and picked up our campervan next day.
We spent our first night just a bit out of Christchurch in the little town of Akaroa on thé banks peninsula.
We drove 2-3 hours discovering low but almost continuous light urbanisation, good highways, badly closed rear doors of our van (we probably lost more than just a few big bottles of water there on the roundabout, but I prefer not to think about it now. We are 600km away from that roundabout were we first realised the door didn't close that well) a lot of sheep, green green gras, me not liking the driving left thing when on high mountain passes,...
The kids fell asleep right away on that first trip, and we thought it was the best jetlag-tackling thing to do to wake them up on arrival around 7pm to go and have dinner in the little town.... We were still hoping it would be OK when entering the first restaurant, but even a promised hot chocolate couldn't wake them up...
Amélie slept against her chair, mat on his chair and William on his dad' lap. We admitted our loss, we paid for the bill and left without eating, carrying out three kids back to our campervan. The freezing night got really chilly when the battery of our van decided to stop heating. Wild camping versus van Meerbeeck 1-0. I made Pierre promise not to do the wild camping again unless night temperatures are above 15 (they where and are around 5) and battery is at least able to heat (and keep the fridge going). We have been sleeping on campingsites ever since. ;-)
Don't ask why, but the boys and myself are slightly 'resfriado' since we arrived; I can't stand the 'we never had such a cold spring' kind of sentences anymore or anything that alludes to it being to cold for the season (no, we don't have soup, it is supposed to be summerwarm!) on the little market in town we made the monthly figures of the lady, buying 4 beautyfull and above all warm and comfy "petits paquets tout chaud" every woman's Dream, every man's night mare ;-)) here showed off a few days after buying, in Portobello.
So after the historical French settlement of Akaroa, we took of to the Victorian history crazy town of Oamaru.
We where lucky to arrive on their biggest weekend of the year, the Victorian Heritage Celebrations, walking trough the streets with all the people dressed up Victorian style and witnessing their big parade in the street amidst the beautiful buildings and nice (oh good luck traveling with three) people. We took the historic little train and at night we sneaked out to watch the little blue penguins come out of sea, cross the road into their nests. We didn't stay long because of it being late and cold, but it was a nice evening nature show for all!
On the next day we drove to Dunedin, southern island's second biggest town, stopping over at Moeraki beach for some jumping on and off the million years old boulders over there. (Well, the process of formation started 60millionnyears ago , says the rough guide!)
After a night close to Dunedin town, we head into the city for a real Belgian rainy Sunday - day. We went to the local technopolis, aka otago museum, good for an hour or 2 activity ending with the highlight for Amélie: the release of the new butterflies in the tropical forest! (See, you come from Iguazu to visit the fake tropical forest in New Zealand...)
After that we went up the hill in the otago peninsula to visit the Larnach Castle. William Larnach by his full name. So needless to say we said it was Williams Castle, so he showed us around as if he had always lived their, explaining in details the use of every room (ici c'est mon bureau pour travailler, ici c est la salle de bain des enfants...)
The gardens are also beautiful and the ideal place to try out Pierre's (shared) new gadget, the one and only selfie stick.
It is quiet fun to see the kids walk around with it! William with a serious face manages to take himself with different background and things to see ; Amélie as a real princess should be, is more focused on her own beauty and transforms the selfie stick in a kind of portable close up mirror; matthias who keeps on hurting his foot, uses it as a walking stick ....
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