Today we took a short, but nice hike in the forest area outside of Hanmer Springs. The area has been heavily logged and it was a bit depressing to walk thru a recent clear-cut forest, but the chance to spend time hiking was nice. The hike was shown to be 2 to 2-1/2 hours long. Val and I, in the great shape that we are right now, did it in about an hour and 10 minutes (pretty sure the map was not right:)

After the hike, we headed back into town to enjoy the thermal hotsprings from whence the town got its name. The springs are in a huge public pool area that reminded me of a resort hotel in the Catskill mountains my parents used to take me to when I was a weee bit of a lad. There were at least 15 pools of varying temperatures ranging from 35 to 41 degrees. Oops, yes everyhting here is in Celcius. They ranged from about 95-105 degrees Fahrenheit. The only drawback was that there must have been at least 100 children running around. Hard to enjoy a hot sulphur pool with a 5 year old splashing his friend next to you.

We spent about 3 hours jumping from pool to pool, trying to regulate our temperature and avoid the kids, before we decided we needed to pack it up and head back to Christchurch for the Buskers Festival starting the next day.

As we got on the road, we decided to check the schedule for the festival and realized that nothing was really happening the first day until the evening. Armed with this info, we decided to find a spot along the way to camp instead of driving all the way into Christchurch. Wow ... glad we did!

As it turns out, we stopped at a place that Val, Scott and I had accidently driven by about a week earlier when we were driving from Kaikoura down to Christchurch while we were trying to find a winery (which we never found). The place is called Waipara Sleepers and was a cool little place that had a bunch of old railroad cars converted into sleeping rooms for backpackers. It was mostly a backpackers and tent camping spot, but they had a couple of spots with power so we could plug in Culli to chill our beer. This turned out to be a sweet spot with rosemary bushes growing everywhere which was perfect because we had talked about cooking pasta for dinner and making a sauce which needed rosemary. We now have enough clipped and drying to last the rest of our time in New Zealand. Here are a few photos of the place.

In the morning we headed off to Christchurch for the first day of the Busker's Festival. Looking forward to it.

Until next time, remember to take time to check out a place you go by every day and don't think you have time to stop. You may be surprised and delighted.

Eric & Val