Geraldine, New Zealand.
This is a pretty town (our touring guide of today
says so).
And it has many, many features like:
- an old building that used to be the town hall,
- another old building which is now the town museum*,
- other buildings and shops and everything what you
can find in a little town which is one hundred years
old and is still sleepy.

On a vacation in a certain country or wherever, you
see their most interesting sites. In this case the sites
are as mentioned above.

* Behind the museum (closed, because it is Sunday) is
our campground.

The campground is very neat (as far as I can see it used
to be the town hortus - they have lots of different trees,
amongst which one giant Pine tree, original of North America -).
Price for one night: 30 New Zealand dollars, which is about 15 Euro’s. And what do you get:
- water
- electricity
- an internet shed (only one PC)
- a large kitchen with everything you need for cooking
and doing the dishes (Ankie cooked and I did the
dishes)
- a TV-room with TV (!!) and chairs
- a place to loose your grey waste
- a laundry (washers and dryers)
- large places to park your camper
- only 2 minutes to the city centre
- etc.

In town there are at least ten shops. You can get almost everything you want, except today (Sunday every shop is closed except bars, café’s, the local juiceshop and the souvenirsshop).
As you can see this is a very exciting town which thrives like unreal (even on Sunday).
We met at least ten people.

We started this morning late. We slept until ten and
we left the campground in Akaroa around eleven.
We had to drive back to Christchurch (75 Km’s) on “the long and winding road” with hairpin corners here and there.
After Christchurch we headed south, direction Mount Cook, which we are to see tomorrow.
From Christchurch we took the scenic road (nr. 72) and came trough very interesting villages like:
- Darfield
- Mount Somers (no mountains to see in the
neighbourhood)
- Mayfield
and suddenly we arrived in Geraldine.
Look on your maps at home and see where we are.

The weather is nice. Some 20 degrees or so and sunshine. Tonight it will be like 10 or so.

It was a very exciting day (we gassed up in Mount Somers) and I am looking forward to another day with lots of interesting things like cows, sheep (for people who like sheep, it must be really heaven), birds, lots of roadkill, sleeping villages, mountains far away (with snow on the tops), a car now and than and many, many other things.

This was it for today.
Tomorrow we head for Mount Cook (3754 meters) and
probably experience: snow and cold. We’ll see.

Greetings to you all from Geraldine, New Zealand.