Mo happened to be in Christchurch as well and we took a day trip 130kms north to Hanmer Springs. There are a few random shots along the way.

I fucking love Hanmer! It's a small alpine town which is home to about 700 and built around a popular hot spring which was discovered in the late 1800s.

Good Kiwi food: the mince pie...

The custard square...

The Belgian square (which I guess strictly speaking is from Belgium, but I used to eat a lot of them and I've never found them anywhere else so it's Kiwi to me :)

At the northern tip of Hanmer is Conical Hill

It's a bloody nice walk up here. I rode my bike up in the snow one time as a kid - good fun!

View from the 550-metre summit.

Another good spot in Hanmer is Dog Stream Track.

Aside from being a good area for a picnic, the track works its way through the surrounding forest and is pretty good for mountain biking too.

Hamner Springs Thermal Pools - bloody nice, especially in winter when it is completely covered in snow (and you can clear a pool pretty quickly by starting a snowball fight with your brother ;) The thermal pools come in all shapes and sizes, and there's something there to keep the brats amused also. Not long after the hydro-slides first opened they apparently had to be shut down and altered slightly because too many people were coming out the bottom all black and blue with injuries hehe.

A trip home wouldn't be complete without at least some carnage. Three people were inhaling petrol in this sleep-out (as you do on a quiet Sunday afternoon) which then somehow caught fire and almost burned to the ground, hahaha!

Down the road a ways I found two three-car pile-ups. The guy below-left started the fun after failing to notice that traffic had stopped in front of him and drove up the arse of the car in front which got shunted into another. Five minutes later, the driver of the red 4WD above-left was rubbernecking and drove up the arse of the grey 4WD in front of him, sending that hard up the arse of the grey Bluebird above-right hehe. Dear me.