This morning we awoke to another beautiful sunny day.  As I was loading the luggage into the truck, I snapped this photo of the motel.

Before heading out of town, we wanted to take a driving tour of the Christchurch area.  In particular, we wanted to take a trip out of the downtown area and into the hills that surround the city and then down to the ocean.

We wound our way around the narrow and twisty road that goes around the nearby hills.  While not has high as some of the other mountain roads we have been on, this one still gives you a nervous feeling, because it doesn’t seem to have any guard rails.

Because the road follows the summit of the hill, there are great views off both sides of the road.  This picture is looking down at the city of Christchurch.

This photo is looking over the opposite side of the road.

In the early afternoon, we got on the road to Blenheim.  The drive would take us up the east coast of the South Island.  Not as mountainous as some of our previous drives, it was still very hilly in most places, and it was obvious we were heading into wine country, as there were more and more vineyards along the road.  We also had some wonderful ocean views as we wound along the coastline for much of the drive.

The following sign is not actually a warning about bad cars ahead!  A ford is also a shallow place where you cross a river by driving through it.  I heard about these on small country roads (and even saw a number of them), but I didn’t expect to see them on main state highways with heavy traffic loads.

There was no water when we went through, but I would imagine that during heavy rains it might look very different.

When we arrived in Blenheim, you could tell we were in the heart of wine country.  There were large vineyards everywhere, including some very large and modern wineries.  You could literally smell the wine while driving into the area!

We eventually arrived at our motel and settled in for the evening.