We flew into Christchurch via Tokyo and Auckland and then drove down to Dunedin. Tokyo was surreal. Strange going from holidaying in Holland to suddenly finding yourself on a plane and in a country you never thought you would visit. We were so tired we got a day room in Tokyo for a few hours and slept and then had a shower which helped a bit. We had 3 seats each on the trip to Auckland where we could at least lie down even if we didn’t get a lot of sleep. Scot thought it was great – it was the first time we had been apart in 3 months and he got to be on his own for the 12 hour flight.
My mother had gone from unresponsive to rallying to remain with us until we arrived. When she heard we were on our way she had gone from not drinking anything for a couple of days where they thought she wasn’t going to last the night to sitting up and saying she wanted a drink.
It was lovely to have some time with her where she had picked up and was even able to sit in a chair – assisted – and had lucid times where she knew who we were and was able to have a short conversation. We got a few smiles from her during the time.
During our stay we had breaks from sitting with mum and went shopping to buys things we wanted to take back with us. We bought that much though that we had to buy an extra suitcase (we only took one over) and filled it to capacity! We now have a few extra kiwi things with us but no room left in the van for ANYTHING else! We have so many books there won’t be any more until a lot of them are gone.
The day we arrived they had had a huge snow fall in Otago and all over the Canterbury plains. Flying in was spectacular seeing all the snow and only the fence and hedge tops showing. There was still snow along the side of the road where it hadn’t thawed on the way down to Dunedin.
For the first couple of days it snowed overnight and froze as well so we had temperatures of -3 and it only got up to about 4 during the day. They had a record low in Otago with Twizel recording -22 one morning. It was hairy driving along the bay road which was covered in frost for a couple of the mornings. I did skid the car at one point with the car coming towards me probably a bit freaked that I was going to go into them.
We had a swim at Moana pool and Scot did some diving – pretending he was 15 again…lol. We were both sore the next day. You don’t realise how much your muscles can hurt when you haven’t swum that distance for a while.
I was a bit accident prone, falling onto the floor when trying to step out of a high bath after a shower where we were staying, and then twisting my ankle badly whilst stepping over a gutter and falling in a heap on the ground. I thought I had broken it and visions of plaster, changing flights etc flashed through my head. Thankfully only a sprained ankle but it is still swollen – I don’t think the flight helped at all.
The most dreadful day was when we had to say goodbye – Wednesday 1st July. Mum was 15 days from her 84th birthday and we had to leave to get back to our van which was parked up in the Netherlands. It was one of the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
We drove back up to Christchurch and flew from there to Auckland, then Shanghai and on to Amsterdam. I don’t care if I never go back to Shanghai airport again. A stark contrast to Tokyo airport that is for sure. You couldn’t see anything for the smog as we were landing and you could smell the pollution as we were disembarking and re-boarding our next flight.
When we arrived in Amsterdam airport we couldn’t buy train tickets as the machines there don’t take cash nor foreign credit cards – only dutch cards. Shit, wouldn’t you think it would be obvious that there would be many tourists who wouldn’t be able to buy train tickets because of this. A kind hearted soul paid for ours on their card and we gave them cash in return. Quite unbelievable really. It turned out they had a heatwave on that day and the temperature when we landed about 6pm was still mid thirties. The heat was so bad it had disrupted all the trains as well. The train we needed to take to Apeldoorn kept on being cancelled due to them not being able to change the tracks at the junctions. It took us 4.5 hours to negotiate our way via trains to go the one hour trip. We were hot tired and a bit cranky. Our amazing new friends Marian and Michel had organised to pick us up which was a godsend and drive us back to our van.
