Day 311 (Mon 14 May) - Christchurch

Sad day today as Ruth and Keith were leaving us to head off to Oz.

Had to drop them off at the airport by 3pm at the latest so decided to drive to the nearby New Brighton for a bit of sea air. Sarb took a little convincing to get up.

Whilst Jo and Sarb went wandering round the town Ruth and Keith had the run of the van to pack their gear up. We returned and then having turfed them out packed our gear up as were going to swap vans today.

Had a great lunch at the pier complex. The pier ( [1], [2] ) is simply a concrete structure with a load of fisherman at the end (we saw a couple of guys catching crabs literally by the bucketful).

Drove Keith and Ruth to the airport and before we knew it we'd said goodbye and were off again. We both felt strange waving them off.

Headed off to the Britz campervan place and swapped our van for a two berth. Jo was not happy with the vehicle they gave us. We wanted a small Toyota (a la Rodney in Oz) for a number of reasons but they gave us a Merc scarcely smaller than the vehicle we'd swapped. Jo kicked off in true Jo style and managed to get them to waive the diesel tax that we would have had to pay on the Merc. Nice one our kid!

With our new Merc we headed on back to the Amber caravan park. We both felt it very odd and empty that Keith and Ruth were not with us.