{"id":2331,"date":"2017-11-24T22:01:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-24T22:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/?p=2331"},"modified":"2026-10-03T22:59:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T22:59:04","slug":"stop-26-ashburton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/stop-26-ashburton\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop #26: Ashburton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was mainly a driving day, but it wasn’t without at least one roadside attraction. We chose to stop at Ashburton for the night, simply because it was right in the middle of where we were coming from and where we were going. It basically had a main road and some restaurants. We stayed at the Bella Vista Motel, which was very clean and modern. For dinner we ate at a Thai restaurant. And that’s about all I remember about Ashburton.<\/p>\n

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After leaving Lake Tekapo, we headed to the coastal city of Timaru. Not to see the coast, but to see a statue of a racehorse. Phar Lap, a champion racehorse during The Great Depression.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We bumped into these two cyclists from the Netherlands at least three times over the past couple of weeks. We were really impressed on how quickly they kept up with us!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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We stopped to explore the incredible rock formation at Castle Hill. These rocks were enormous, and the surrounding countryside added to their grandeur. It’s also know to be great for rock-climbing, as you can see from the mattress-carrying rock-climbers in the foreground.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It had a “Stonehenge-meets-Easter-Island” feel to it, with the fact that these stones were in a middle of a hilly field with no trees around whatsoever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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There were all sorts of pathways to take, it felt a bit like a rocky labyrinth. I think Dominique and I lost each other at one point!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The shapes of some of the stones begged for animal comparisons. These looked like elephants, but did you know New Zealand actually has another rock formation called “Elephant Rocks”?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The views from the top of the wind-swept rocks were stunning. Those are cows down below.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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This one reminds looked like the head of snake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Dominique taking a well deserved break before attacking the summit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A couple of climbers lounging on the cliffside. We were high up, but we never felt vertigo or in danger of falling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The limestone, which looks smooth, was not slippery at all and we had a lot of grip, making it easy to climb and hold our balance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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This one I’ll call: “Fat Penguin”.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Castle Hill is in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, where many scenes from Lord of the Rings were shot. If you pretend those black cows were Orcs, you can almost picture Gandalf and the rest of The Fellowship running from them over these hills. Nearby we tried to go to Mount Sunday, where the set of the hall of King Th\u00e9oden in Edoras was constructed. Unfortunately the road became less and less like a road, so turned around to avoid the risk of popping a tire and being stuck in the middle of nowhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was mainly a driving day, but it wasn’t without at least one roadside attraction. We chose to stop at Ashburton for the night, simply because it was right in the middle of where we were coming from and where we were going. It basically had a main road and some restaurants. We stayed at … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stop #26: Ashburton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-south-island","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2372,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions\/2372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anothertimezone.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}