We stayed overnight at Maxwell’s Golf Retreat, a great B&B in a place called Bombay, about 20 miles south of Auckland.

This was our last day with the Ford wagon, which has served us well over the last 31 days. After navigating our way through Monday morning commuter traffic, we arrived at Auckland airport and dropped off the motor.

Next stop was checking into our flight back down to Christchurch at 1pm.

The day after we fly on to Sydney, Australia for Xmas.

We then had time to kill, so settled into some reading and a McDonald’s late breakfast meal.

After a glorious day of sunshine yesterday, today has been the complete opposite with temperatures dropping to just 15c and heavy rain descending. This weather pattern has hit the whole of the country, meaning there were lots of flights either delayed or cancelled internally. Our flight was affected and we left Auckland 90mins later than planned.

Once safely on our Air New Zealand flight, we got ourselves comfortable and did our best to snooze through the turbulence that ensued as we headed to the South Island over the 1hr 20min flight.

As ever we had an enjoyable flight and service with Air NZ, always friendly staff and there with a smile and a biscuit or two!

After landing late afternoon, we quickly checked into our hotel close to the airport and then cabbed it into central Christchurch. We chose to ignore the wind and the rain and made our way to Riverside Market.

Once we’d made our food order it was drinks time, a glass of IPA for Andy and a dry Rose for Michelle.

The arrival of an Indian chicken tikka, naan and some popadoms proved just the ticket and helped to quell our hunger.

After our early dinner, we moved on to The Craft Embassy, a couple of doors down the river for more craft beer and a local Sav Blanc.

This was a great way to celebrate & honour our last night in New Zealand after 5 weeks in this wonderland country. Tomorrow we make our long awaited return to Manly, Australia for Xmas and New Year.

After drinks and a meal in Christchurch, we returned to our the airport and entered into ‘Xmas land’ in the hotel reception.

Tomorrow we have a 3.5hrs flight to Sydney to look forward to and our reunion with Amelia who is flying in from the UK.

It’s then Xmas with Caroline, Gary and the kids and the rest of the expat posse!