Day 5 - Franz Josef to Christchurch

 Long drive day = (whiney) comments (mainly from just one child (DP)) about... 

1. not stopping 
2. back seat comfort, or lack thereof
3. hunger

Responses

1. shoosh there little man - sometimes life is about the journey, not the destination
2. it's hilarious - I'm the smallest person in the car and I get the biggest, most comfortable seat ALL THE TIME
3. and your last Combantrin was when?

Anyway - off to an ouchy start...

Followed by an almost immediate breach of point 1...

And then tension for DP - was it ok to break point 1 to fix point 3?  No answer - too busy eating not one but two pies.

Fuelled up it was time to cruise from the West to East coast via Arthur's pass, that included crossing this...

and scenery like this

And then EXCITEMENT plus!! 

Time for the cave stream - a pretty innocuous name for an adrenaline laden 1 hour adventure extraordinaire that involved an exhilarating 594m slip trip fest through an underground cave stream in the PITCH BLACK.

There are many brochures and websites that tell you exactly how to prepare for the cave stream walk that we read after we'd been 😆.  Hence the difference in preparation between the group on the left and Danny P on the right - and this was just the start of amateur hour.

Mistake Number 1 - rocking up to cave entrance without torch.  Rectification - 30 minute walk from cave entrance to car and back again with small torch.  

Mistake Number 2 - not checking torch batteries.  No rectification. 

Mistake 3 - forging into cave anyway. Rectification - sneakily waiting for 2 groups of non-amateurs with large working headlamps and carefully placing Price party in between them.

And so began an adventure - some (JP) may have called it an ordeal.  Onwards and upwards through a skinny splashy rocky chilly squishy dark crack in the ground!!  And oh goody - there were eels!

Amateurs ready for anything!

What it looks like inside the cave stream

Map of the route, wiggle baby eels and the tricky exit from the cave

Whoo hoooo. That was one of the coolest things ever! 

And then off we popped to the next attraction a mere 2kms away...Castle Rocks.  Also cool, but not in an adrenaline-laden, eely kind of way.

Very pretty flowers everywhere and the weather was perfect..

Then on to Christchurch and out to dinner....

Very nice Mexican but teensy weensy serves

And afterwards a stroll to get Gelato where we stumbled across a bunch of buskers belting out a bunch of Split Enz covers and yep he was singing I See Red!! 

And if that wasn't enough for one day the boys went indoor bouldering while we checked out a cost-co sized supermarket called Pak 'n Save.

Truly knackered after all that and am still in bed now at 10am the next morning.  Been awake though and spending waaay too long doing this blog post!