Go for an epic car trip.

Auckland - Marsden Point - Whangarei - Doubtless Bay - Kaitaia - Auckland

710km+, 10+ hours driving.

And enough hills to test your stomach. Check out this section of State Highway One through the Mangamuka’s, brilliant way to test out your power steering.

Okay I have way to many pictures from my weekend away in Christchurch to post online but here are the quick highlights.

At 9am on Saturday I flew to Christchurch with my mum for the weekend.

Upon ariving the first thing we did was go to a wildlife reserve.

It was kinda like a zoo but only featured New Zealand animals.

It had three sections: Wild New Zealand, Agricultural New Zealand and Bird New Zealand or something like that:

Wild NZ was the best of the three sections.

First I made friends with a very friendly wallaby. I don’t normally call things cute. But this guy was very cute.

In the Wild New Zealand section they had an old remote tramping hut. So just to show you how cool NZ tramping is here it is from the outside, and below from the inside:

And most importantly the out house:

The Agricultural New Zealand section was cool with lots of farm yard animals. I mistook a donkey for a large sheep. A black goat tried to make friends with my camera and a very friendly clydesdale horse also tried to eat me and my camera.

In the birds section I got to see up close a number of Kiwi, and other NZ birds including our famous Kea or Green Parrot:

And a Morepork:

After the adventures at the wildlife reserve we went and looked at the centre of Christchurch including the Square, Lincoln University, and New Brighton beach.

On Sunday we headed to Lyttelton through an awesome tunnel and then back over the Port Hills. After that we decided to head out to Mt Hutt for a look. Little did I know that the access road to Mt Hutt was a 20km dirt mountain road, and I only had a 1000cc rental car. Fun!

This is coming down the road. It was plenty wide. But really rough and bumpy.

Mt Hutt Ski Field

The Snow Bunny in his natural habitat.

I am a bit late in blogging this because I was away. But these were the conditions that I had to contend with when heading to the airport last Wednesday morning as a second large storm hit.

A bridge on SH17 between the Albany township and the Albany Tavern was underwater earlier today but reopened by 6.20am.

All lanes of Oteha Valley Road were flooded on the eastern side of the motorway but the road was passable, police said.

Got back from Wellington last night where I had been for a training seminar.

Firstly when I arrived at the Hotel in Wellington I was advised that I had been upgraded to a room with a balcony. Wow. This didn’t mean much to me as I was merely staying overnight and when I arrived it was already dark but it was still cool to be upgraded. I also enjoyed having breakfast delivered to the room being more cheap then actually going to the onsite restaurant for breakfast, both time saving and affordable. Despite the price being $170/night I would recommend Wellington Holiday Inn they provide a fantastic service.

My second change came when I went to fly back to Auckland last night. The flight that I was booked on was cancelled. At this news I was expecting a painful wait for a spare seat on another flight back. But instead big ups to Air New Zealand who managed to squeeze me onto another flight that departed 30mins earlier then my canceled flight. That is some fantastic service.