The Banks peninsula and Christchurch : last step in New Zealand
After a cold and rainy night, we hit the road to the Banks Peninsula, and Sumner Beach more precisely, to meet up with our favorite Swiss family, that we first met in Patagonia. We get together for lunch right by the beach, and spend a couple hours hanging out and going over our last respective adventures (we tell them about our trip in New Zealand, that they will leave the next day to visit, and they tell us about their awesome time in Easter Island and Tahiti). We have a great time together before having to go our separate ways (they start their road trip tomorrow, and we continue along the Banks Peninsula) and setup another meeting in Thailand beginning of January. We are super happy to be have been able to find some time to see them!
We leave them and hop back in the van to Diamond Harbour, a little further on the peninsula. On the way we stop a few times to take pictures of the view on Christchurch, and of the prairies filled with sheep.
The road to Diamond Harbour is winding but beautiful. We ride along the coast, stopping multiple times at lookouts offering exceptional views on the bay.
We stop to admire the landscape, and the color of the water changing with the color of the sky.
We keep on driving by amazing but different landscapes during the next 30 miles.
We arrive in Diamond Harbour, a tiny village where it seems like we are the only tourists. And we have to be honest, it feels great. Just a couple of vans are parked on the free campsite of the city. We are just a few yards away from the coast. The view is amazing.
We even go for an hour long walk from the campsite. We walk along the coast, through a forest and then climb to have an overlook on a couple different bays, it is stunning. The color of the water is just as incredible.
Just besides the campsite, there is a tiny city center, made of a bar, restaurant and tiny grocery shop. We stop by the bar to enjoy an ice cold beer on the patio after our little walk. And as we thought, we are the only tourists around. It feels great to be surrounded by locals, something we haven’t really felt too much during our 3 weeks in New Zealand, since we mainly visited very touristic sites.
Tonight, Maider treats herself to an ice-cream from the local shop, and we sit on a bench to admire the sunset.
Our evenings follow but are never the same in this exceptional country. The end is close and we are already sad that we have to leave New Zealand soon.
After a warmer night than the previous one, we leave Diamond Harbour to go a little deeper into the Banks peninsula. The peninsula is a volcanic terrain, marked by magnificent bays and charming valleys around the city of Akaroa. The road winds among green plains.
We decide to take the summit road, that offers amazing point of views on the bay.
And we quickly realize that the peninsula is mainly home to cows and sheep.
We stay a while parked in front of the bay, observing the landscape.
The clouds come and go at an incredible speed and we get from sun to fog in the blink of an eye. Magical !
And as we are capturing this beautiful scenery, the Pelka family drives by! So we meet them again, in the middle of nowhere, by pure chance. Incredible! We stay a while together admiring the landscape, before definitely saying goodbye until Thailand.
We drive down between Barry’s bay and Duchauvelle’s bay, to an awesome spot for lunch, that we found thanks to the Campermate app.
We are all alone facing the ocean. It’s beautiful, the sun is shinning, the dream !
We are really lucky with the weather, because initially rain was forecasted for the day. The bay is surreal.
There is a little trail that leads up to another tiny peninsula, and we decide to go for a small walk after lunch. From there we have a great view on Barry’s bay on one side, and Duchauvelle’s bay on the other side. At one point we have to across the water, thankfully the tide is going down.
The cliff separates both bays. And the color of the rocks are simply amazing.
We walk on top of it to gain some altitude and have a better view on the surroundings.
Then we continue on the hill to get to the end of the peninsula.
Once again the color of the ocean is spectacular.
Especially with the clouds coming and going and the shadows on the water. Magnificent !
Initially we hadn’t planned on coming to the Banks Peninsula, but we are really glad we changed plans and decided to come. It is really really pretty !
We then continue driving towards Akaroa, the most well known village of the peninsula. And because we are French, we were told we had to stop there. Why? Because it was first settled and occupied by the French a long time ago. Indeed, Akaroa was France’s first settlement in New Zealand, when Captain Jean-Francois Langlois decided to buy the Banks peninsula from the Maori in 1838. He then left to France and came back with 60 men in 1840, but discovered that the British had claimed the territory by then and had to settle in what is now known as the village of Akaroa. Today there isn’t much of France left aside from a few street names,
French flags a little bit everywhere,
and a few typical French shops like a few restaurants, a creperie and a butcher shop.
The rest of the village is very pretty with its old houses, full of charm, and its very peaceful atmosphere.
The bay, called French Bay of course, is very nice. We walk along the bay until we reach the lighthouse.
We take the time to sit and enjoy an excellent waffle. These last few days in New Zealand feel like vacation.
We spend the night in Akaroa, in another free campsite. There is a very nice view on the harbor from here, but unfortunately we won’t see a thing because of the heavy storm that hits in the early evening. It rains absolutely all night, and it even hails at one point.
The night is super cold, and it is only 37°F when we wake up. And we thought winter was behind us… Thankfully the rain has stopped, to let place to a nice blue sky. Today we have to drop-off the van, so we spend some time in the morning cleaning up and gathering our stuff, before heading to Christchurch. We get back on the road on the Banks peninsula to drive the 45 miles that separate us from Christchurch. Of course we take some more pictures on the way. The landscape is as always amazing.
We arrive in Christchurch late in the morning, and the blue sky decided to abandon us. And it is still freezing cold… We decide to go visit the Quake City museum, that goes over the devastating earthquakes that hit the city in 2010 and 2011. This museum is really very well done, and helps understand the state of the city today. We spent time watching feedback and stories from locals about what happened to them at the time of the tragic events.
During the afternoon, we drop-off our luggage in the hostel we booked 2 nights in, before dropping off the van. It’s with a little sadness that we leave the van. It was our home for 3 weeks, and we absolutely loved every single moment we lived in it. Even if we were cold at times, drove in storms with crappy windshield wipers and struggled changing gears with the left hand, we slept in the most beautiful places ever and drove past incredible landscapes. Three weeks felt way too short to discover this magnificent country, but we can only recommend visiting New Zealand with a van.
We spent our last day in Christchurch working on the blog and working on our itinerary in Australia before catching our flight to Melbourne.