Day 4 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DAY: Kairkoura to Greymouth through Christchurch

We woke up early Thursday morning in Kaikoura, a little beach town on the East Coast of the South Island. Our goal was to catch the sunrise on the beach, which we had accidentally found by taking a wrong turn on the way to the restaurant the night before. A happy accident indeed.



We scrambled out of our hotel room with our bags, looked up, and saw this, which we had missed the night before because it was dark when we got into town:

The view from our door as we stepped outside.

The beautiful sunrise on Kaikoura beach.

We actually saw the sunrise on one coast of the Island and set on the other in the same day.

We thanked God for the beauty of His creation and the blessing of getting to experience this.




Then we set out on the drive to Christchurch, one of the biggest cities on South Island. Here are pictures from the drive there. Check out the mountains. They were everywhere! We kept pulling over for pictures.

We got into Christchurch around 10:30 in the morning and messed around for a little bit trying to find a helicopter tour because the city is known for it's breathtaking views. We stopped at the library to check email and update Facebook, typical. We did find the helicopter tours but they were CRAZY expensive. We decided to press on with our driving tour of the landscape and just enjoy the day.

We ended up crossing over these some of the huge mountains, which was quite intense.

Then we went through a place called Arthur's Pass, a pass between two mountains of the Southern Alps.

We stopped a little scenic overlook to take pictures.

While Patrick was finishing up taking pictures, I decided to go back to the car.

Until I noticed a couple of these birds on top of our car and started screaming!

Patrick looked over to see why I was screaming and said, "Oh yeah, I saw a sign that said something about not feeding the birds." He tried shooing them away, which didn't work. Finally he made a mad dash for the car and turned it on. They flew into the street CLOSER TO ME. I was freaking out, so Patrick wheeled the car around and I jumped in very quickly.

Patrick asked the man at our hotel that night about the birds and he said that even though you're not supposed to feed them, many people do. So they come around anytime there's a car looking for food. He said you had to watch them because they're sort of aggressive and will try to pull your windshield wipers off! I don't know if you noticed in the picture but that is exactly what that little guy is doing!


After the bird crisis, we continued on through the pass towards Greymouth, where we planned to stay for the night. More gorgeous scenery as we drove.

We stopped on the side of the road to take a picture and found this goat! He had apparently gotten loose. There was a house was nearby and people outside so we asked them if it belonged to them. The lady was supposedly a physic (that's what the sign outside said) but didn't know her goat was missing. Bad for business I would say.

The sun was beginning to set just as we got into Greymouth, another beach town but on the West Coast.

The sun setting over the beach. Beauty.

We checked into the Alpine Rose Motel, the nicest of the three since we'd left Auckland.

Sorry for the mess. I keep telling Patrick to take pictures of the rooms BEFORE we unpack.

We had dinner at Subway, which in New Zealand also serves fine coffees and offers diced lamb with mint sauce as a sandwich option. They were out. We were ok with that.

We came back to the room and Patrick did lots of schoolwork while I tried to type up the first of these posts, journaling our trip. I forgot to hit save and lost everything I typed, hence the reason I'm a little behind on days. I quit after that and watched the Sex and the City movie on TV, made a cup of coffee with the fresh milk provided by the innkeeper, and relaxed until bedtime.