Day 31 - The Last Day of the Tour - Return to Christchurch

​It was only fitting that we had another very early start this morning. Our first stop was a pretty special one - we planted a tree together to leave our ‘handprint’ on New Zealand. I am pleased to say that I got stuck into the process - I hope that Dad is proud that his green fingers at least temporarily rubbed off on me.


We were experiencing proper west coast weather - I.e. a lot of rain - so were not able to do a bush walk, and instead stopped at the town of Hokitika. I had an excellent pot of tea and pastry, and then managed to squeeze in a couple of caches too! I have converted Dana to geocaching, so it was lovely to have a caching buddy.

We continued to head north to Greymouth, so called because it is where there is the mouth of the river Grey…. It was still raining, so we once more took shelter in a cafe! Pleasingly the rain let up for long enough for a fairly decent run of caches and AdLabs.

Kreig had started to drive the bus to Christchurch, leaving us to catch the Trans Alpine train. Although the train was late due to ‘operational delays’ (definitely the term I am going to now use if I am late for anything!), we eventually set off and enjoyed the five hour journey across Arthur’s Pass. Whilst the weather limited our views at times, when it stopped we saw a stunning rainbow, which more than made up for it.


We were late getting into Christchurch, so went straight to our farewell dinner. It was a lovely evening - Kreig had printed off photos for us all, and everyone said lots of lovely things. We also auctioned off a few items for charity, including Kevin the Kiwi. I decided I could not justify the over $100 he eventually went for… but Viktoria has told me that I can visit him in Switzerland!

A lot of us will be able to say our goodbyes at breakfast in the morning, but a few are leaving early, so we did our first proper goodbyes at the hotel. It has been a lovely group of people to travel with, and I am certain that my path will cross some of theirs again.

Tomorrow I will, for better or worse, be back solo!

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