Literally, driving me crazy

We spent about a half hour in Christchurch, first having our cereal in the car along side the river Avon in the pouring rain, then trying to find a toilet while avoiding the the trams that scoot by every now and then. Once we had enough of that we headed for Akaroa, another seaside village that is famous for its seal swims and Hectors dolphins. It claims to be the only place in NZ where you can see Hectors dolphins and therefore the only place in the world as their habitat is in NZ waters. All a lie as we know we are going to see them in the Catlins, NZ.

We stopped off along one of many of the winding passes to have coffee as we were freeeezing. The green lipped mussels on the menu looked great so we tucked into a serving each which was fantastic. They are the best mussels I have eaten in a while and compete with the ones I ate in Belgium. Further down the road towards Akaroa with picked up a hitchhiker from Holland, this Dutchie was proud to say we were his 62nd lift in NZ so far and he rattled off the places he has been with some delight. I was pretty envious. We only had three weeks here and I would love to slow down and do more, less often. This guy had also been to Ghana to teach when he was 19, he reckons nobody wants to learn there so all he did was teach them music, in Dutch. Within a month he had them singing dutch songs while he played along on his guitar (no BZN I hope).

Akaroa turned out to only be a filling station for us as we missed the immediate attraction. The area was apparently settled in 1804 by French settlers who had intended to establish a colony. The English got wind of this and claimed the land under the treaty of Waitangi, otherwise the South Island may have been French. The area still has a French influence, reflected in many local place and street names.

We decided to head for the mountains and I had a couple places in mind on the Christchurch - Queenstown road. We had little time before nightfall and many kilometers to cover. We covered those kilometers, but not without a hair raising moment or two. At one point I chose to try overtake a truck and two cars in one manouvre, coming desperately close to the rather large all terrain vehicle passing me in oncoming traffic. Enough scares for one day, I was really and truly getting sick of driving and it was taking it's toll.