and we're off!

Ann, Charlie and I had brunch at the Cathedral Café this morning (again, loosely speaking on the morning part) and were surrounded by several corps of bag pipers. This was not a good thing. Ok, so maybe I don’t have any loyalty to my partial Scottish heritage, but those things should never have been invented, or they should at least be banned in public places and before noon on weekends. I can usually hear them even from my hostel ten blocks away – there’s a weekly gathering in the square, and they are very enthusiastic.

After brunch, we said goodbye to Charlie and headed back to the hostel to pack everything up. Ann’s an expert packer, so I left her in charge of the car while I took down the tent and packed up all the food from the communal kitchen and charged everything up since we’ll be without electricity most days.

Ann got everything back in the car just before the rain started up again, and after showers and goodbyes to everyone at the hostel we hit the road around 3 pm. We were only about five hours off our target! Then, once we hit the road, we stopped again! Did some more shopping at yet another Warehouse location, got a nice Indian dinner and finally headed south along SH1 past Timaru (where I got pulled over in January) and Oamaru (we missed the penguins at dusk but found a nice fruit & veg store) to our campsite at Glencoe Scenic Reserve, about 275km from Christchurch. We arrived in pouring rain, and split setting up camp and kitchen duty so we had a nice warm hamburger dinner ready and the tent and sleeping gear set up all at the same time. We got in late and, with the rain, really had nothing to do so crashed right after cleaning up (somewhat) from dinner.

Photo: The dead spot on the ground from being under my tent for 10 weeks!