New Zealand Day 5

Wednesday, Dec. 18th

Piton to Kaikoura

We took the opportunity this morning to repack our car, by this time of going in and out with all our gear, the place got to be a crazy mess. Checked out of the Holiday Park and headed downtown. Got breakfast panini's and tea at the Sea Breeze Cafe.

Our drive out of town we decided to take the scenic route out and around the edge of the peninsula before starting south. This road ended up being much longer then we planned, unexpectedly gravel, and no facilities of any kind along the route. We came very close to running out of gas and were getting very nervous about it.

Finally, once we reached the main highway, we came to a town big enough to have a gas station. We took this opportunity to also stop at a grocery store to load up on food and necessities.

Once we rolled into the wonderful town of Kaikoura and checked into the Top 10 Holiday Park, we headed downtown to the ocean. We took a stroll on on the Peninsula Walk and had a picnic lunch. And later we walked the downtown street, got ice cream cones, then walked on the beach for a bit.

We had dinner at the campground which we made in the kitchen, then spent the rest of our downtime that evening in the lounge watching a movie and using the computer. The rain started to come down and we didn't want to have to be out in it if we didn't have to.

*Really cool discovery... all the campground around New Zealand (which are pretty much all like KOA campgrounds her in the US) have public kitchens, with stoves, fridges, and sometimes a full set of kitchen utensils assailable for use. This really made making "homemade" food easier to accomplish.

*Found out the the power converter that we bought was a really bad one and didn't work for more then 10 minutes with the laptop.