It's a bit bigger than what we are used to from our VW T5 back home, but hey it is more spacious and has a toilet and a shower on board! Pretty cool. So since we had another night booked at the hostel, but had already seen Christchurch yesterday (there wasn't really much to see anyway) we decided to make a small excursion to Akaroa. The van is really nice to drive, but it's so weird to be on the wrong side of the car and road! But luckily we have a GPS on board which is showing the way and kindly reminding us every once in a while that "we drive on the left side here in New Zealand". Nevertheless I kept searching for the gearstick on the wrong side :p
The first half of the way to Akaroa was pretty uneventful, but then the GPS decided to spice things up a bit. It told us to move away from the main road and follow a smaller one, which was weird but hey I thought it might know a short cut so we went ahead following the road uphil. On the way a car came the opposite way so I moved aside and as it passed the driver was shaking her head. Pretty rude I thought. A couple of minutes later we came to a road sign saying the road ahead is recommended for 4WD cars only. Oh well it looked like a normal dirt road so we followed it for a while, but then the bumps and rain grooves started. It dawned on us why the driver was shaking her head, and when the road also reached an inclination of almost 30% we decided to abandon thoughts of continuing and turn around. No idea why the GPS thought that was a better option for us since the main road was perfectly fine in the end.
After that we followed the tourist route as shown on the street sign along the Summit road, ignoring further suggestions by the GPS to turn in similar roads, and were rewarded with a beautiful view of the bay and the sea surrounding the peninsula. It was definitely a worthy place to go for an excursion.
But guess what, on the way back the GPS tried to send us again to the 4WD road from the other side! Piece of crap, I expect it will give us more such joyful rides until the end of our trip :D