Flight home

We're home - it's good to be home. I didn't sleep much on the flight from Auckland to San Francisco - so I'm tired. Its back to work tomorrow - and dirve on the other side of the road again. It's also raining here too. We think the rain followed us from Christchurch - which isn't really possible but it sure feels like.

Shona is glad we're home - we're all glad we're home.

Wed - Last day

It is still raining in Christchurch. It rained most of the night – we could hear it on the roof and the windows of our room. But, we still woke up early and went for an early morning run to Christchurch city center and then back. Even at 7:00 am, there are few people out moving around and the cafes-coffee shops are not even open.

We modified our plans to explore the city center more, because of the rain, & decided to go to the Canterbury Museum by Hagley park. Since the museum wasn’t open until 9, we had a very good breakfast Le Café, across from the Canterbury Museum and the Christchurch Art Gallery. It was excellent, and probably the best java I’ve had here.

The museum is a pretty decent museum, with several exhibits on the ancient Maori tribes that inhabited the island and the how the settlers came to the island. It was a good way to spend a rainy morning in Christchurch, given that we only had a few hours to spend before leaving for the airport. And, then we walked back out into the rain, walked to a shop before decided we’d had enough of the rain. We then headed disappointingly left for the airport.

I cannot believe our holiday is over. Greg still is trying to convince me to eat a meat pie at the Auckland airport (when we get there)… but interestingly, he doesn’t seem to offer that he’ll have a meat pie. He just wants me to eat a meat pie.

Extra note – do you know it cost $25.00 NZ to leave the country? You would think they would want us to leave without paying some tax/duty to leave. They complain about immigration and welcome tourists… but will charge you $25 NZ pp to leave the place.

Tues. - Arthur's Pass

We tried a different route to the train station – there is just no easy way to get there from the city center and it still took us an hour to walk there. Did I mention that it was still raining? We finally reached the train station, and realized that there is a ton of free parking at the station. We should have just drove – ugh.

We bought our boarding passes (which were the most expensive thing we’ve done while here), and headed off through the Canterbury plains toward Arthur’s Pass. It was either raining or drab and cloudy most of the ride there and all the time in Arthur’s Pass village. I’m sure it’s a spectacular sight when the weather is clear, but the clouds and mist obscured the views the whole time we were there. We still did 2 different walks while in the village and had a good lunch at the ‘The Wobbly Kea’ where we listened to Elvis’ greatest hits & I had some fish & chips (and some okay ice cream at the café across the street). (As a side note, a Kea is a large green parrot/hawk here that is endangered here in NZ – one exhibit at a DOC office said there were less than 5000 on the island, but Greg & I both swear that we’ve seen more than 5000 trying to pick at the possums that have been killed by traffic.)

Greg continued in his efforts to try to get me to eat a meat pie, which looks like a pot pie with all kinds of meat (steak, lamb, or chicken). I resisted – but I swear, there are meat pies in every café, convenience store, and bakery. When they say, pie – they do not mean fruit pie – they mean a little pie with meat, meat, and more meat.

Anyway, it was a nice day overall considering that it rained and we would have otherwise been stuck in Christchurch in the rain. Being at Arthur’s Pass in the rain was more our style – at least we were among the trees and waterfalls.

We also discovered ‘the deal’ with the possums – for those curious, they were imported from Australia in the 1800s sometime and apparently eat the rata flowers, which prevents the rata (NZ Christmas tree) from pollinating/reproducing. However, in recent years, possum fur has become in demand so the population has been controlled.

However, something called a skout and rat pelts are not in demand, and since there are NO natural predators here on the island, NZ takes active efforts to poison and set traps for these animals since they destroy the natural bird population. Interesting… huh?

Not as much as the deer – there were originally 20 deer imported in 1800s or so, and they thrived here. While there are deer farms and deer reserves here (they serve venison on almost every menu & in meat pies), they also shoot wild deer from helicopters to minimize or eliminate the wild deer population.

Well, enough of the flora & fauna lesson…

We reached Christchurch shortly after 6:00, and managed to walk back to the Old Countryhouse hostel in 45 minutes – in the rain. We then walked a block or so to a great little pizza place called “The Memphis Belle.” It was excellent, even though the music overhead was the same song played over & over.

We then decided to try what is a NZ custom & had ice cream treats at “Tip Top.” For those who aren’t in the know, Tip Top are frozen ice cream treats sold at Tip Top stores. They are actually pretty good – they’re like very high quality ice cream bars. Definitely worth a try.

Mon. – Drive from Te Anau to Christchurch

After using the motel’s wi-fi to update our blogs and download pictures, we headed out on a foggy morning toward Christchurch. We knew it was going to be a long day of driving, but we really want to take the train to Arthur’s Pass. We took the road past Queenstown, toward Lake Tekapo. Just before Lake Tekapo, there were some beautiful clear views of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman – the views from the road before Lake Tekapo were actually better than at Lake Tekapo. There were a ton of buses and tourists at the Church of the Good Shepard there, and we decided that it looked a little too touristy for us, so we kept on.

We reached Christchurch at 4:30 or so & managed to navigate our way to the Old Countryhouse hostel where we are staying. It’s a nice place (definitely recommend) and we got a room with an en suite bathroom – the shower is excellent and room is a decent size. We then walked to the city center and ate dinner at The My Thai and Monkey Bar – it was good food but the service was lacking. We also had some trouble finding it.

Then again, we had trouble finding everything in the city center the first day – it turns out that the maps are wrong. Christchurch has rerouted some of their major roads – for example, there was Blenheim on the map (which is actually closed) and Blenheim (which isn’t even on the map).

But we didn’t learn this until we spent nearly 2 hours walking trying to find the train station (for tomorrow morning) after eating dinner. It was pouring rain the entire time we were looking for it at times, and we were lost several times during the 2 hours just to get there. We finally found it, and it still took us 1 hour 20 minutes to get back to the hostel. Even though the map looks like it’s just a few kilometers from the hostel, it was still a long walk, particularly in the pouring rain.

I was so cold & wet when we reached the hostel – Greg wanted ice cream; I wanted to crawl under the covers and warm up.