And so we awoke on the dawn of our final morning in the van (very sad) and packed up the beds for the last time (not so sad). Instead of heading straight back down the coast to Christchurch we headed inland on the alpine/pacific triangle to the spa town of Hanmer Springs to have a reflective and recuperative soak in their nine naturally heated mountain spring pools. The hottest was 42 degrees and they were all mineral enriched and supposed to be healing (we were hoping they'd heal up our everlasting sand-fly bites).
After and hour or so of this we felt fully cooked and suitably healed so we took the van to a spectacular view point we'd spotted on the way in to have a last scenic lunch.
We felt a bit lah-de-dah when other vans jumped on our band wagon and caught us eating stuffed pasta and balsamic dressed salad on the edge of the cliff; it was just missing a table cloth and candelabra!
I inevitably snoozed a bit on the final bit of the drive back to Christchurch and so within a flash we were back in the city and back at Tudor Court motel unpacking the van as if we'd never been away. Eric and Rob took the van back while I stayed behind to sort out all our stuff and put a wash on (and have a nice quiet cup of tea). They returned very shortly on a bus. There had been no probs returning the van and in fact we were refunded two days of the cost when we mentioned a few things that hadn't worked perfectly!
We all finished packing together and then took our Forrest wine around the corner to the Thai restaurant that Rob and I had tried out two weeks before. Over an excellent dinner we mused over our incredible two weeks in the van and agreed that they had totally exceeded all of our expectations.
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