Road Trip Cont...

We then drove over to the east coast and followed the coastline up to Christchurch camping at some awesome surfing beaches along the way. One of the best parts about this trip was waking up everyday without an agenda or any idea where we would sleep that night. It is so freeing to be able to do that. The beaches were empty and vast. Unfortunately Jon's ring decided to stay at one of them, slipping off somewhere and disappearing on the waves of oblivion. We had a Gollum moment before sadly relinquishing our efforts and moving on up the coast. It was very sad, but it shouldn't be too hard to find him another one along the way...

We have spent the last 2 days exploring Christchurch, which is still recovering from its recent earthquake. It's really sad to see all of the old buildings in their dilapidated conditions (although I do love the textures in photographs of them), stores closed, and streets empty. (Jon was hoping to feel an aftershock, but we don't think we have.) It seems to be a pretty cool city. There was a street performance festival going on at Cathedral Square all weekend so we caught some of that, found some great cafes (Kiwis do coffee really really well), discovered a nice Brazilian bar, and enjoyed the English gardens.

We are off to Thailand tomorrow and are really excited! It's hard to believe that January is almost over!

-Jesikah