Thursday Nov. 30, 2017
Hi! Oh man, we’ve been so busy! …keeping up with the blog has definitely been more difficult to manage than we had anticipated. First off, we thought the universal converter we bought wasn’t working (actually the 2nd one we bought). After talking with some locals, we realized that we could turn the metal pieces of the plug creating the correct adaptor. We had tried turning them before but I guess we weren’t doing it the right way. Anyway! Because of that our batteries have been running low or dead. AND, the whole idea that I (Angela) would type the blogs up while on the road – uh, yeah right. The roads are all over the place. Most of my energy on our long drive yesterday was focused on not getting motion sickness. We’ll blog about that later… for now, we’ll continue with the 2nd half of our 1st full day in NZ…
^Our first two nights were spent in the Banks Peninsula, a short drive from Christchurch
After our drive down from the sheep farm, we headed toward Little River. This was a pretty short drive, only about an hour. (Little River and Akaroa are both on the Banks Peninsula – see above in image southeast from Christchurch) On the way, we stopped in at the Hilltop Tavern. We noticed this little wood-fired pizza joint on our initial drive into Akaroa. We hoped to stop in at a later time as the view here – well, it was along the same lines as everything else so far. It just made any worries melt away. THIS… it’s one of the reasons why I need to push myself to get away, to explore, and to experience. It really helps to put things, to put life into perspective. Yes, the stresses of the day-to-day…work, responsibilities, hard decisions…they’re stressful, but there’s so much more to life and this is such a wonderful reminder to just be like a duck and let it roll right off. It’s not worth it to let life slip away. If you’re not happy, make a change. Your life depends on it.
^On the road back down from the sheep farm, there were several times I would yell out to Adam, “Stop the car!” …so many amazing photo ops. And, yes, that was my side of the car. 😉
^Look above, if you look closely you can see the cruise ship we had watched cruise into the harbor earlier in the day!
^View from the Hilltop Tavern
^Sheep just chillin’ outside the Hilltop Tavern (yes, they are EVERYWHERE)
Okay, so after some delicious pizza we were on our way to the long awaited Little River PurePod. Following the directions, we drove off the main road onto a seldom-traveled dirt road. Fairly quickly we located the “carpark. We were to hike from this lot up to the Pod. We were the only vehicle in the lot. We got out and gathered our belongings. It was about a 10-minute hike up so we had packed go-bags earlier in the day. Our car looked like an off-road machine at this point. When we closed the trunk a big POOF! of dirt went flying.
We started our hike up to the PurePod. The trail was similar to the roads… tight, winding and steep. I was out of breath, heart pounding by the time we reached the top. It was quite warm (saying this in my head I feel the New Zealander way of speaking getting into my head – I *quite* like the way they do so) and I was glistening in the sun. The trail opened up into wide and green farmland – the views were vast. As we took in the surroundings we saw cattle, sheep, and even spotted a rabbit during our stay. The birds are always plentiful.
The PurePod was closed up but unlocked. As far as crime goes in these parts – we hadn’t seen a sign of it. Out here, it was just us – well, and the farm animals. The inside of the PurePod was hot. There was no air-conditioning. We slid open all the doors and the place essentially became a platform with a plush bed out in the middle of the rolling hills. It cooled off rather quick as the breeze was nice.
We grabbed a beer and started to explore. We walked around taking pictures, basically frolicking in the abyss. We climbed over fences we were not to cross (we read the Visitor’s Guide after our explorations, oops!). We came back and set some lounger chairs out in the tall grass and grabbed a bottle of red wine, Cabernet Sauvignon to be exact. From the fridge we grabbed some of the local cheeses, olives, crackers, and ciabatta bread that was left for us and we made a plate to go along with our wine. We sat and enjoyed each other’s company, chatting about life – simply watching the sun move further down toward the horizon. The moon began to rise. It was bright & beautiful coming up over the mountainous hills.
As the sun began to set, we noticed we could see a body of water from the backside of the Pod. Through the break in the bush we were able to watch the sunset. We grilled steaks on the Weber grill – local beef handpicked for us. Dinner was delicious.
After we filled up with dinner and finished the bottle of wine, we headed off to bed to sleep under the stars in our glass house. A truly amazing night.
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