January 12

Despite the late evening, I was awake and up at 0640. It was tea, toast, coke and then a shower and finally dressing. I packed up, checked the unit and then packed the car. Because we left so early, we left the key in the unit and were on the road by 0745. I refuelled in Dunedin city at Mobil, heading south, and then left, going north, at 0755. We went by the Moeraki Boulders and I gave Fran the same commentary as yesterday, just so she knew I could remember. Not far north, we went through back roads to cut across to the main road to Mt Cook via Takiroa, where we stopped to view Maori paintings. We stopped in Kurow to use a toilet – they were very clean and there was an interesting display in the town.
After that stop we went straight through to Mt Cook. Our first stop to view Mt Cook was at Peter’s Lookout – there were many views as we went along the road through the valley, each unique in its own way. At Mt Cook Settlement, we looked through the Visitor Centre, which was new – it had not been there when I had last visited with mum. We ate our lunch outside at the picnic benches – Fran spilled her drink water in her bag over books and all the paperwork in there. When we left we drove back through Geraldine (I got a photo for Elizabeth there) and Ashburton, drove over a very long bridge (remember that a lot of New Zealand rivers are glacial, and so have small and narrow main channels but wide beds up to a mile wide) and had to put NZ$10 petrol in along the way (too close to call, so I decided to play safe).
We got into Christchurch at 1705 and went straight into our motel. It seemed very good. I immediately booked a taxi for Wednesday morning early, to go to the airport. In the unit we had a cup of tea and unpacked. I checked my emails, but the Internet allowance was not sufficient to upload photos. We went out for tea at Robbie’s, as we had a discount voucher from the motel for a meal there. We walked there and back. At the office, Fran requested a newspaper for tomorrow morning (we had seen a police car rushing up towards Mt Cook and wanted to know what the story was).
Back in the unit we changed, I processed today’s photos and then summarised my blog for today. Fran watched TV while I did this and we were soon to bed and to sleep about 2200.