AUCKLAND — ROTORUA 27th, 28th February —CHRISTCHURCH— 1st March, 2021.

All our plans suddenly changed last Saturday 27th February. We couldn’t take anymore disappointment re our travelling plans so we packed up and left Auckland before level 3 lockdown took place on Sunday.  We were originally going to leave on Sunday March 7 to pick up our campervan ( more about that later). We drove to Rotorua on Saturday night where we spent two nights in the Millennium Hotel. It was a great chance to catch up with my cousin Christine and Dave.  After our two nights in Rotorua  today 1st March we drove around to Christine and Daves place to leave our car there for the time we are down in the South Island. They then took us to the airport to catch a plane to Christchurch flying  Air New Zealand in an ATR72 propeller plane . Good flight nice little plane but the seats were so hard. Took about an hour twenty faster than predicted. Had a booking with the Airport Christchurch Motel. The proprietor picked us up from the airport. Comfortable unit. Not sure what is going to happen next ‘but watch this space’. We will be picking up a Maui Motorhome here in Christchurch  on the 7th of March and will be travelling around the middle area of the South Island for three weeks. Map below shows our intended route marked in BLACK.  Looks like we definitely won’t be travelling to Perth in May this year after we re booked it when we had to cancel May 2020 due to Covid, so decided to do another trip to the South Island. I decided to go back to my usual theme background  which I have used on all my previous blogs . As the new background theme I used on my last trip, just didn’t work well for me. I’m keeping to what works best for what I am doing.

Click or tap on the above photo to bring up closer for detail. That goes for all photos to follow. We are planning to go anti clockwise depending on weather.

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We are now settled into the Motel in Christchurch and will consider what we do next. This morning we did ring up Maui to see if we could book a few extra days onto the beginning  of our trip but were told they had nothing to offer. We find this hard to believe as there seems to be hundreds of vans just sitting in their yard near the airport. The proprietor in the motel said he would drive us over to Maui tomorrow to talk to them face to face as when we ring it’s just transferred over to a call centre.

We will see what happens in the morning, as the weather isn’t looking too good down here at the moment so will have to decide what to do next. We might just look at staying here in the motel and hiring a car until Saturday when our campervan is due to be picked up.  This dam Covid. ‘What will be will be’.

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A few shots around Rotorua while we were filling in time this morning,

To add to my collection of prime real estate.