A Dress Rehearsal.....

Like all well-planned activities, a "dress rehearsal" is conducted to iron out any potential problems, or to test the plan (and participants!) to see if it will work....
So, over the weekend we headed south to Christchurch and Akaroa. It was a wet, cold Friday night in Akaroa; the streets were almost deserted. No problems finding a park, that's for sure. We went out for dinner - no, not French cuisine as you would expect from New Zealand's only French settlement - but Thai. And it was velly good! Big helpings too. I can highly recommend their green curry and pad thai.

On Saturday we picked up my boys, did a bit of retail therapy in CHCH, then back to Akaroa for dinner. This time it was their famous Fish & Chips. Not-so-large servings this time, but scrumptious nonetheless. Sunday we needed to work off all this food, so went for a hike to Akaroa heads - no, not toilets in naval speak - the headlands to the harbour.

The site of the old lighthouse (1880-1977), to be exact. Plenty of old foundations to the keepers' houses etc. Whilst having lunch on the cliff tops, we watched a pod of 3 whales (species unknown) make their way east, followed by a "whale watching" boat and a random speed boat that turned up late. Great stuff.

After lunch of salami and cheese sammies, we followed a track down to the cove where supplies used to be unloaded. Sam and I descended the very steep steel ladder down to the rocks, to clamber along and take some happy snaps of sunbathing fur seals. Jimmy and Carmen remained up top, watching our back. Good teamwork!
Later on that day we left Akaroa, and had smoko with a couple of mates on the way back to dropping the boys off at their place, as son #1 had work Monday morning. A long drive back to Akaroa meant we didn't hit the scratcher until midnight. A pleasant flight back home today concluded our dress rehearsal for the real thing coming up. So far, so good!