I’ve jumped out of the timeline for my last few posts, but I’m sure you can keep up ๐
I’m sure that you can imagine that travelling alone over the Christmas period is a very lonely experience. However it’s not quite as bad as you may think, before you get offended let me explain. Firstly it doesn’t feel like Christmas, it’s hot and bright, the sun sets late and rises early. Secondly I’ve stoically refused to fully acknowledge that it’s Christmas/New Year. My reasoning being that Christmas is a time to be with family and New Year is a time to be with friends. Seeing that family and friends are pretty much as far away as they can get without leaving the planet (other than the new friends here in NZ of course, but they’re all on the other island).
So, what did I do on Christmas? I went on a boat trip around Milford Sound and got an early night – essentially no change to my travelling. Unfortunately this did put me out of mobile range so I couldn’t talk to home.
On new years I had some sausages – proper meat is a rarity because I don’t have a fridge in the van. I did stay up until about 10:30 but that was it (second New Years in a row when I didn’t to anything, last year I had the flu!) As luck would have it I was in a skiing town and therefore was completely dead in summer. This meant that there was only myself and some guys in a tent at the campsite. Nice and quiet – just what I wanted.
Alison said that she and Mark went over Arthur’s pass when they were there, I think she said it was on South Island. Maybe that’s worth having a look at.
I’ll have a look at my map, I think I may already be too far North to get that, don’t want to go back on myself if you see what I mean ๐
I see on our atlas that Arthur’s pass is on the road (and railway) between Christchurch and Greymouth, which is in the northern half of South Island.