It has been a very windy night with some rain; at some stages the wind was so strong that the camper van shook. Needless to say, this did not disturb the LLW who could sleep through a hurricane.
When the sun rose all was calm, sunny and quite beautiful. A different cruise ship had entered into our panorama but we will forgive them on this occasion. It is interesting because, you dear reader, may recall that until the earthquake of 2011 cruise ships anchored at Lyttleton which is a small town and harbour only 15 minutes from Christchurch. We had lunch at Lyttleton in and a few weeks after we left the town was totally destroyed and the port along with it. Since then the cruise ships have anchored at Akaroa which is a 1 1/2 hours drive from Christchurch. Its interesting because whilst the passengers clog up the town and dominate the various tours etc, they have brought a huge amount of business to Akaroa. The town will miss this business hugely if the cruise ships go back to Lyttleton, but there is no sign of this at present.
A few chores this morning including a load of washing and tumble drying which is very easy at the Top 10 camp sites as the facilities are excellent. Less than excellent has been the internet access here at Akaroa. For some strange reason it is delivering around 5 Mps download (which is acceptable) but a miserly 0.2Mbps upload (which is simply unworkable). Asynchronous communications normally delivers better download than upload but this is an extraordinary differential. This is primarily the reason for lack of photos recently since they need to be uploaded to add to the blog. Also and much more seriously, it has affected the LLW's work since whilst she can download documents OK, once they have been edited they need to be uploaded again to the DocMan at Wedlake Bell and synchronised with the document on the system. This simply does not work at 0.2 Mps!
The LLW threw a few things and then we decided to drive across the peninsula to Little Akaloa and Ovains Bay via the scenic, tourist route. This proved to be very slow and definitely arduous but the views were to die for.
It's very difficult to describe this drive but whilst difficult we were treated to some of the best views ever. I have just managed to upload 1 but you will get the gist. I will try to add some more over the next couple of days if the internet allows me.
Back at Akaroa we did some shopping at Four Square and managed to dodge most of the cruise ship passengers who were raiding every shop in sight.
Back at the camp site we enjoyed a BBQ overlooking the harbour, but even in the evening having to keep out of the sun a fair amount.
Tomorrow we leave Akaroa and head to the lake district and Otago which is the last part of our visit to NZ. The end of our adventure is looming and we are not too happy about that but we are very privileged to be able to do this fairly regularly and will soon be yearning to come back.
When the sun rose all was calm, sunny and quite beautiful. A different cruise ship had entered into our panorama but we will forgive them on this occasion. It is interesting because, you dear reader, may recall that until the earthquake of 2011 cruise ships anchored at Lyttleton which is a small town and harbour only 15 minutes from Christchurch. We had lunch at Lyttleton in and a few weeks after we left the town was totally destroyed and the port along with it. Since then the cruise ships have anchored at Akaroa which is a 1 1/2 hours drive from Christchurch. Its interesting because whilst the passengers clog up the town and dominate the various tours etc, they have brought a huge amount of business to Akaroa. The town will miss this business hugely if the cruise ships go back to Lyttleton, but there is no sign of this at present.
A few chores this morning including a load of washing and tumble drying which is very easy at the Top 10 camp sites as the facilities are excellent. Less than excellent has been the internet access here at Akaroa. For some strange reason it is delivering around 5 Mps download (which is acceptable) but a miserly 0.2Mbps upload (which is simply unworkable). Asynchronous communications normally delivers better download than upload but this is an extraordinary differential. This is primarily the reason for lack of photos recently since they need to be uploaded to add to the blog. Also and much more seriously, it has affected the LLW's work since whilst she can download documents OK, once they have been edited they need to be uploaded again to the DocMan at Wedlake Bell and synchronised with the document on the system. This simply does not work at 0.2 Mps!
The LLW threw a few things and then we decided to drive across the peninsula to Little Akaloa and Ovains Bay via the scenic, tourist route. This proved to be very slow and definitely arduous but the views were to die for.
It's very difficult to describe this drive but whilst difficult we were treated to some of the best views ever. I have just managed to upload 1 but you will get the gist. I will try to add some more over the next couple of days if the internet allows me.
Back at Akaroa we did some shopping at Four Square and managed to dodge most of the cruise ship passengers who were raiding every shop in sight.
Back at the camp site we enjoyed a BBQ overlooking the harbour, but even in the evening having to keep out of the sun a fair amount.
Tomorrow we leave Akaroa and head to the lake district and Otago which is the last part of our visit to NZ. The end of our adventure is looming and we are not too happy about that but we are very privileged to be able to do this fairly regularly and will soon be yearning to come back.
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