Our final dinner was awesome. It was also a birthday dinner for one of our group, and we had salmon on mashed koumara (I think that was the name … sweet potatoes) with spinach and mushrooms and a side garnish of sun dried tomatoes and feta cheese and olives, along with some champagne we had collected along the way and a bottle of wine a couple trip members donated from their wine tasting tour. The dinner was fabulous, and made us appeciate how lucky we were when it came to guides on this trip.
We hung out in the living room after dinner and talked, and made a list of our New Zealand-isms. From the plane flight came “do up your seatbelts.” The appetizers that were put out to appease the hungry hikers while dinner was cooking were “wee nibblies.” Our guides often encouraged us to “go have a wander” along the beach or elsewhere. Good on you. No worries. Cheers.
Next morning we headed off for the airport. Along the way we stopped at the Cookie Time factory, which is where the largest cookie in the world was made. The walls of the buildings are painted with chocolate chip cookies. We didn’t get a tour, but if you buy a cookie in the show room they have a microwave to heat it up, so they clearly have the proper respect for a warm chocolate chip cookie.
Then it was time to say good bye, much as we all wanted to go around again. We had become a family over the past 11 days, and I will miss my new friends. Most of the group headed for the flight to Auckland and home. I headed for the international terminal to fly to Australia and the Tasmania portion of my trip, and the van drove off for the last time with our guides and one person who will spend one more day in Christchurch. It was a wonderful trip with a great group of people in a very special place, led by guides who truly wanted to share their country with us. The weather was sometimes uncooperative, but we were able to do nearly all that we set out to do.
Next stop, Tasmania. Cheers!
No comments:
Post a Comment