Plans are made to change them, right?
Well, so we did! :)
Originally we planned to:
* take the Overlander train from Wellington up to Auckland on the 19th.
* have a rental car for a week, driving around coromandel
* spend Christmas with Barbaras family and friends in Auckland
* fly down to Christchurch on the 26th
* rent a campervan and drive around the south island for 2 weeks
* take the train from Christchurch to Picton
* return to Wellington via SoundsAir on the 9th of January 2010
Well….. since two weeks of campervan rental fee was about 1/4th of the price of an excellent offer for a new (used) car/minivan, we decided to go ahead and just buy & build our own “campervan”. :-)
We got a really great deal for a Mazda MPV from 2000. It’s a four wheel drive and has got enough space to sleep in – once we take the last row of seats out and build a bed frame into it. :) VTNZ evaluated the car to be twice as much as we paid.
We will still be taking the Overlander from Wellington to Auckland and have the rental car up there. That part didn’t change.
Instead flying directly to Christchurch though, we will be flying back to Wellington, jump into our van and take the Bluebridge ferry over to Picton. Then we have two weeks on the South Island before heading back to Wellington (taking the ferry again).
We still have to figure out what we will be doing with our Soundsair tickets, but it shouldn’t be a problem to fly another time.