Days 18 & 19: Amberley and Akaroa

Scottie’s Story

Lazy start to the day, before we headed off to Amberley to go out for lunch with a schoolfriend and her husband. We went for a meal at the Waipara Springs Winery – funnily enough Rob had steak and I had fish – the pattern continues. We also had flights of wine which was a great way to taste a few of their wines. We also managed a dessert before heading back to Liz & Gregor’s for coffee and a great chat about school days. Lots of “do you remember …” and fun memories that made me realise that I had not spoken to anyone about these days for eons ie since I left school. The time just sped past and it was time to head back to Christchurch after a lovely few hours of chat.

The next day we headed to Akaroa. The roads in the main were fine, but there were some very twisty-turny bits that went on for quite a while. We got there without any motion sickness and went for a stroll. It is quite a small place, with a bit of a French history, which was evident with some of the street names. We had a bit of a challenge finding somewhere for lunch but eventually settled on one place – unfortunately for me this was not a good choice. I ordered salmon and asked for it without the pesto, as garlic makes me ill. I thought I had made the “garlic-free” request pretty clear, but when the salmon arrived there was no pesto, but the potatoes and veg were covered in chopped garlic! Duh!! I basically had salmon on its own, which was nice enough, but it really needed other flavours to go with it. As my brother would say, it was disappointing.

To make up for the disappointment we went to a different place for ice-cream, which was great, and more than made up for the poor main course.

While we were in Akaroa Rob got a message asking if he could change his kayaking session as the weather on his planned day was not looking great, but if we brought it in by a day the weather would not be an issue. After working out the logistics we swiftly left Akaroa and headed back to Christchurch, and within 15 minutes we had packed an overnight bag and were on the road to Kaikoura. We were really lucky that the hotel was able to change out booked to a day earlier otherwise we’d have had to set off at 5:30am. We arrived at 9pm and the restaurant was shut so we had a cordon bleu supper of wine and crisps on our balcony overlooking the water. Very peaceful.

Rob’s Reflections

Went to meet Lorna’s schoolfriend Liz and husband Gregor – had a lovely meal at a local winery, then back to their farm, where we got to meet their collection of dogs, and even get a very brief glimpse of one of their cats

The next day saw us take a trip to Akaroa, a tres jolie former French colonial town, situated in an area dominated by long extict volcanoes, which retains Francophone road naming. Part way though this day the kayaking company I was due to go on a trip with phoned to say that the weather forecast for Wednesday was looking grim, and could I make Tuesday instead. This would require leaving Christchurch around 5am in the morning, but we said yes to this. On the way back to base we managed to get a hold of the hotel we had booked in Kaikoura, and they moved things around so that we could stay Monday evening (today!) instead of Tuesday. Bags backed, back in the car after a quick turnaround, and off we set. Managed to arrive just after 9pm, and got served crisps and a drink as everything started to close, which we enjoyed on the balcony outside our room. It was very much a restaurant/bar which did rooms rather than a hotel, but they had done the place up very nicely, easily the nicest paid accommodation we stayed in so far.