27 degrees, sunny
We’ve driven all round the country covering over 6000 km, most of the time with hardly another vehicle in sight, but the night we decide to park next to the road is when they all come out! Unbeknown to us there was a milk processing plant in one direction and an abattoir in the other, so all night double length milk and stock trucks trundled past every 30 seconds or so (or so it seemed). Not to mention the logging lorries! Bit of a restless night all round.
We were on our way by 9.30 am to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsular close to Christchurch. After 3 days of fairly flat countryside we suddenly started climbing again over the hills that led to the Akaroa inlet with a stunning view of the harbour as we topped the hill.
We decided we’d had enough of Freedom Camping and we weren’t sure how much gas we had left, so checked into a nice campsite on the hill overlooking the harbour. There was a steep path down to the town so we wandered down in the afternoon and spent an hour or so on the beach before returning to the van to change and go back down for dinner in a nice French restaurant for a treat.