The 10 hours flight wasn’t so bad… especially since it was on Singapore Airlines. The last time was on Air New Zealand and it was sheer boredom without any real inflight entertainment.
We arrived in the morning and planned a night’s stay in Christchurch mainly to sort out the rest of the travel plans… or rather, to get on to the planning. One of the first things was to get in touch with the car rental company Apex. The nice guys at Apex have already given me their contact but the airport’s information counter was kind to help as well.
Unless you were with Avis or Hertz, where the rental cars are parked right at the airport and you just need to pick them up from there, the other companies provide courtesy pick-up to fetch you to their office to sort out the documents and collect the car. We opted for a Rav4 but we got a Subaru Forester… excellent ride.
First of business was to check in. It was an easy drive to where we were staying. We brought our own GPS which was really useful in the city areas. However, due to the major reconstruction in Christchurch, the GPS was pretty useless.
As usual, we were lost as to what to do or where to go after we checked in. Unfortunately, it was only 2pm and sun doesn’t set till maybe 9pm. So we decided to do some grocery shopping up before bumming around Avon River for a bit but really, it wasn’t quite worth the trip.
So we started looking at the map and place called Lyttelton came up. It is a port town some 20km away from Christchurch and we thought it would be nice to take the car out of the city to have dinner. Of course, the immediate concern was if we were able to make it back before night falls since we wanted to avoid driving at night. Concerns aside, we went ahead anyway.
Driving to Lyttelton gave us the first taste of what it was like to be driving in NZ. The landscape changed rapidly from built-up areas with traffic lights to two-way winding roads with extensive hills on the side.
Lyttelton houses the city’s container port and this stems from the town’s history as a harbour town where the first Europeans landed. Despite being a port town, it pretty much retains the small town quaint and charm.
Unfortunately, traces of destruction from the February quake were evident everywhere throughout the town. Since we could not find any restaurants (probably we didn’t look hard enough), we decided to drive further down the road to Governor’s Bay.
Being on a hillside, the road to Governor’s Bay was pretty narrow and winding. However, it also offers fantastic view of the bay area.
Governor’s Bay is but a small settlement with probably two noticeable landmarks – the school and the historic Governor’s Bay Hotel.
Dinner was at Governor’s Bay Hotel. No doubt small but it has got a homely feeling. Definitely a great place to celebrate a wedding engagement or family gathering.
Not wanting to drive in the dark, we finished dinner and were off to the hotel before 9pm. In any case, Christchurch’s pretty dead by the time night fell.
