31.12.18 New Years Eve in Akaroa

At 9:30 am I leave this crowded campground. The showers were okay. Since the sun is shining, I drive to the beach again for a few sunny pictures of the bay. My destination today is one of my favorite places in New Zealand: Akaroa.

There is a TOP10 Holiday Park here, where I reserved a spot for 2 nights with a view of the bay back in May. It's New Years Eve and I wanted to have a great spot here. The campground is located a bit outside of town, high up on the hill and has only about 6-7 spots with this unobstructed view of the bay. For that, the price is proud: 94 NZ dollars (about 50 EUR) for 2 nights is the highest price I have paid for a campground during the whole trip.

The drive from Christchurch to Akaroa takes about 1.5 hours. The route initially runs through flat terrain, and a reed landscape indicates the nearby sea. However, the last 45 minutes are a continuous succession of steep curves. Here, I again become the hater of my slow camper. I try to drive through the curves in 2nd gear with at least 30-40 km/h, but I have to practically pull over into every available small lay-by next to the road to let the traffic pass behind me which quickly builds up. After that, it's time to start on a hill with a snail's pace gear that initiates a speed of 5-8 km/h, and I can then pull out again after just 100m because there are already 30 cars stuck behind me. Suddenly, after a curve, I have a big tanker truck with a trailer in front of me. It's unbelievable that such vehicles are on the road here, where hardly any campers can pass each other in the oncoming traffic. The tanker truck drives even slower than me and I crawl along at 20 km/h behind the stinking truck, I have no more visibility and that is annoying too. An overtaking attempt with the camper almost goes wrong, so I let all the better motorized cars pass again and stop at the left roadside for 10 minutes, then join the line again behind the truck. Now I at least have some visibility ahead. My camper is roaring and roaring and the floor panel under and beside me is boiling hot. As always, there are towels here to dry. It's like a built-in clothes dryer. I just wonder when I might have a technical problem here if I always torture the camper like this. But what can I do? Only 3 more days, then I'm finally rid of this thing.

In Akaroa - where I eventually arrive quite annoyed - there is a lot going on. A cruise ship is in the bay, and parking spaces are hard to find. So at some point, I turn around and head to the campground instead. It is not really well-situated for a walk into town, so I actually wanted to take a stroll in the city first and then go there. But for now, I'm just annoyed and want my pitch and the toilet.

The pitch that I get is so dumb that I have no view of the bay from my camper, because there is a tall hedge behind me and from a camper you only have a view of foliage, but not of the harbor. So I walk back to the reception and after a long discussion, I finally manage to get a neighboring spot without a hedge.

Since it's not that great here either - it's really crowded - I decide to give it another try and drive down to Akaroa with the camper. The footpath would be very steep, which would be quite annoying especially on the way back and I assume that I might have to walk back in the dark. So, car it is.

I drive through Akaroa and walk to the lighthouse on foot. It wasn't always here and I also refrain from taking a tour today. What I haven't managed to do in Akaroa on the last two occasions was to drive up Lighthouse Road, from where you have a great view of the bay and the mountains. This little side trip actually scares me. The road is empty, but extremely narrow, steep, curvy, and crooked. More than once, I'm afraid that the camper will tip over because the road is so slanted. The car is at its limit and so am I. At the next opportunity, I drive into a field entrance, turn around and drive back. Phew! Never again with a camper! No more route experiments of this kind. Nevertheless: The view from my turning point up there, overlooking the bay, the town, and the mountains, is breathtaking. The weather is also really great now at 25°C with a light breeze. Wow - the 3rd day in sandals!

In Akaroa, I find a not really legal parking space even in the shade of a tree and hope that the police won't tow me away. I stroll along the pier, where the tender boats of the cruise ship drop off and pick up guests, and find a trailer here that fries, grills, and sells fresh fish from the bay. I treat myself to a red gurnard - a New Zealand salmon species. After that, I have to walk a lot - it was a huge portion. So I visit all the shops, walk around the bay, and walk through the other part of the city, crisscrossing. Just like five years ago during my last visit here, the gardens are overflowing with colorful summer flowers, which stretch over the wooden fences and twine around the colorful houses. Endless photo opportunities.

Back at the campground - it's still light out - I now have huge motorhome neighbors on the neighboring pitches. My mini camper looks like a sidecar among them and I don't want to imagine how I would have driven such a big vehicle up here, considering the road that leads here. Unfortunately, there are Germans next to me again. On the other side, there's a Danish family.

The path to the kitchen and toilet is steep and far. This campground may be beautifully situated, but it will not be remembered as the best of my trip. Of course, it's top high season here and it's so incredibly crowded and loud - the washrooms are naturally also correspondingly strained, unclean, even though they are apparently cleaned several times a day.

My New Year's Eve meal consists of a 3-day-old roll with the last 2 corners of cream cheese and pickles, accompanied by a New Zealand rosé that I bought in Methven. People around me are in a celebratory mood. There is chatting, music, laughter, children whizzing around. Actually a nice atmosphere.

At midnight, the usual happens: Nothing.

I had already experienced this in Wellington five years ago. There was 5 minutes of fireworks and that was it. In Akaroa, about 3 rockets go up into the black night sky downtown, people celebrate behind me, and soon it becomes pleasantly quiet. 2019 has begun...