Greymouth, New Zealand

We checked that our flight from Auckland to Christchurch was on schedule first thing when we woke up at 6am. One benefit of staying at an airport hotel is that they are focused on passengers catching flights. So no worries about breakfast at early hours.

It’s a three hour difference between Adelaide and Auckland so it felt like 3am for us, ugh.

Caught the 7am shuttle to the airport. We had no problems at self check-in, printing our luggage tags (our boarding passes were digital), nor getting through security.

Then the wait at the gate, hoping our flight wouldn’t be cancelled. flightaware.com showed the inbound flight was on schedule, which boded well. (It’s amazing how much flight-related info is out there on the web).

And then we boarded! Another full flight, although this was a shorter flight at only 85 minutes. We even got a hot beverage. We had checked that our luggage was with us before we departed, so there was no nervous wait for our luggage at the conveyor.

I picked up the rental car from Sixt while Heather gathered our luggage. Sixt was very organized, with our car keys and agreement all ready to go. When researching the trip, one of frequent complaints I had seen was car rental reservations with no cars, (I think there’s a Seinfeld for that). So it was a relief to see that our car was indeed there :) I planned the trip south-to-north to increase our car chances. It’s way more common to start in the north, so car rental companies normally end up with all their cars in Christchurch. It’s possible to get a big discount to drive the cars north for them; but this requires a bit of schedule flexibility which we didn’t have.

So took our ‘before’ pics of our Toyota Corolla rental, loaded up our luggage, and we were off on the final leg of our little adventure, six weeks in New Zealand, country number 97 for me :)

About Australia, it’s the first country we’ve spent a bit of time in and not used cash. We used tap everywhere. Usually we are in countries a little more off the beaten path, where access to the banking system isn’t ubiquitous and cash is needed, so I don’t think this will become a trend for us.

We were on the road by 11am, not far off our original plan of 10am, so the missed flight didn’t impact our itinerary much at all.

The drive from Christchurch to the west coast through Arthur’s Pass was spectacular. We lucked out with a beautiful sunny day as well. The folks at Breakers Boutique had given us suggested stops along the drive, from which we picked the ones most interesting to us.

The hedges around farms in Canterbury were huge, about 20ft tall and neatly trimmed.

First stop was at World Famous Sheffield Pies for lunch, where we had some savoury pies. Mmm good.

Next up was Castle Hill, with 4-storey boulders on a hill. It’s a pleasant 30 minute walk from the car park on track that loops around the boulders. We were surprised that the car park was full (we’re still in what would been shoulder season pre-covid) but it was a Saturday and it looked like there were some rock climbing clubs meeting.

Had a coffee in Arthur’s Pass, where we had our first view of kea, a mountain parrot, scavenging at the restaurant. You’re not supposed to feed them but I guess enough people do to make it worthwhile for them to hang out.

Last stop was at Deaths Corner, which has great views of the valley (we also stopped at another viewpoint, not on our lodge’s suggested stops, now we know why, lol).

Finally reached the west coast and turned north on Hwy 6. The highway runs most of the west coast of the South Island, and should be on lists of best road trips in the world. Today we just had 10 minutes on it to get to our lodge, but we’ll be driving most of its length over the next few days.

We stayed at Breakers Boutique. For some reason they had upgraded us to a nicer room, which was amazing. Too bad we just have one night here.

We dropped our stuff and walked down to the pebble beach. I’ve never seen so much driftwood in my life! Heather loves the sounds and sight of the ocean, and there was no shortage of that here. There’s a reason they named the place Breakers Boutique :)

We had the homemade pizza (it's the only item on offer - otherwise it's a 15 minute drive to town for takeout) and a NZ pinot noir for dinner and watched the ocean. It was a great start to NZ!