Akaroa

After a long drive we stopped for the night 10km outside of Akaroa at a nice campsite by the lake. We were looking forward to a bit of a lie in as we were going to spend the day exploring the area and watching the wildlife. Oh how we were wrong!!

At 7.30 we got woken up by the site owner warning us of a tsunami alert! In true fashion we didn't panic so had a shower, bushed our teeth and then thought about what to do! We took advice from the great Metallica and 'ran to the hills' (it was also the official advice). So there we were eating our coco pops from the safety of about 500 metres to protect ourselves from the expected 1 metre tsunami! We watched from the hill and saw nothing so left shortly after it was expected to hit the area, only to hear on the radio that the tsunami we had evacuated from turned out to be 50cm high!!! It was from the Chile earthquake so it was predicted to be bad but it's good to know that they have precautions in place. We were still advised to stay away from the sea and tidal lakes (like the one we slept next to) so never actually got to see Akaroa itself, and headed straight to Christchurch a day early.

Later that day we went and purchased our winter clothing ready for the artic weather of Japan!