Whirlwind

The last couple of days have been super fun, intense, and busy-sort of like a whirlwind of activity.  On Friday, we woke up and went to explore downtown Christchurch.  It kind of reminds me of New York City a little bit, in that the streets are lined with shops.  However, it is not very congested with people or cars, which is nice.  The intersections make weird noises when it is time for you to use the crosswalk, which took a little while to get used to.  There are lots of street performers on the weekends, which is neat.  We saw Christchurch Cathedral, which is really neat-lots of stained-glass windows and the like.  It is right downtown, in the center of everything.  We walked to the Arts Centre, which is a couple of old buildings refurbished to hold small arts and crafts type stores.  We would have had trouble pulling my mom out of there if she were here!  Amanda and I each bought a book in one of the stores.  We then kept walking and found Christchurch’s Botanical Gardens.  There will be some pictures on my Facebook from there, but here’s one for an example:

The gardens are a huge sprawl of flowers, humongous trees, and open grassy areas.  We only walked like 1/3 of the way in because we were tired from all the walking.  We then went and got bus cards to use for the rest of the week.  They are a lot faster to use when loading the bus, and cost less than paying cash.  This is excellent because we use the bus at least 2x a day, and it saves us almost a dollar each time.  We then went back to the hostel because we were going on the Tamaki cultural experience that night.  We got back to the hostel, and we had a note on our doorknob telling Amy that we needed to call Tamaki.  We did and Amy was told that the night was cancelled because of “things under the ground.”  What that means, we are not so sure.  We were kind of bummed, but glad that we would be getting a full refund.  So, we decided to go to a fancy restaurant down on the pier of the beach called “Salt on the Pier.”  Amanda got a surf and turf, which was a steak with shrimp and scallops, and I got seafood chowder.  It was very good.  The presentation was fantastic-they made a tower of au gratin-type potatoes which they placed the steak on.  And, it tasted delicious.  We then decided to walk to the end of the pier.  This was quite a feat since the wind was blowing very hard.  There was a guy exercising running to the end and back, which we thought was impressive.  There were lots of people fishing off the pier; most were catching crabs and the like.  When we got to the end, we walked back right away because it was very cold due to the wind (okay, not too cold compared to Minnesota).  Then we went back to the room and emailed the various activities that we planned on doing in Cairns (pronounced cans).  There was a huge cyclone that went through the area Cairns is in, so we wanted to make sure the things that we are going to do (more on that later) were still available.  They are, which was a relief.  We then went to sleep because we were exhausted from walking so much.

Saturday (yesterday) was PACKED with activities, and it was very exhausting, yet fabulous.  We woke up that morning around 9 or so, and took off into town for the shuttle to the Antarctic Centre.  Christchurch is known as the “gateway to Antarctica” or something similar to that; the United States has their Antarctic Exploration Program’s headquarters in Christchurch.  Thus, there is a tourist attraction all about Antarctica.  Some of the activities that were there include a snow and ice experience room (not unlike a 0 degree day standing in the bus line at St. John’s), a penguin exhibit (where they have penguins that were taken from the wild because they were injured), a 4-D experience ride (getting sprayed in the face 7 times was about 6 too many), and a ride in an Antarctic vehicle.  The ride was super intense-comparable to a super-shaky roller coaster.  The vehicle was amphibious, so it went under-water as well, which was neat.

We got back from the Antarctic Centre around 16:00 or so, and then walked around a little more.  The day before, we found an advertisement for the Christchurch Gondola.  So, we decided to do that.  It was a gondola that brought you up about 2,500 feet from the city.  See the video on our blog, as well as pictures on Facebook.  When we went back, we found a place for dinner, at which I had nachos and Amanda had wedges.  Apparently the thing to do here is to put sweet chili sauce on your potatoes-it’s everywhere.  The food was humongous, and we probably should have shared something.  However, it was cheap, which we like.  We then waited around a bit, watching rugby on TV there.  I still don’t understand it, after watching 3 or so games, and somewhat knowing what was going on.  We then walked past the Botanic Gardens about 4 more blocks to Hagley Park, where they were holding “Classical Sparks.”  This was essentially Music in Plymouth, Christchurch style.  For those of you who don’t know what Music in Plymouth is, “Classical Sparks” was a symphony orchestra concert outside, where everyone brings blankets and lawn chairs, sees everyone they know, and there are food and drink places all around the outside.  It was a lot of fun, although it was sprinkling for quite a while.  The orchestra played Ride of the Valkyries, Beethoven No. 5, Mo.1, a Mozart piece I recognized from Music Theory (forgot the name).  But, I will never forget the arranged version for orchestra, choir, and military band-with a lead singer-of The Final Countdown.  That was awesome!  We had to unfortunately leave before the second half started, since we were going to an improv show.  I was bummed, but it was well worth leaving.  The show we went to started at 22:00, which was later than we had stayed up the previous two nights.  It was hilarious-I was laughing the entire time.  It was similar to “Whose Line is It Anyway.”  However, there was one bit I particularly liked where they did a ballet.  The two suggestions yelled were volcano and turtle, so they did a ballet about these two things.  It was hilarious to watch them act out ballet moves while trying to be turtles.  It was made even more hilarious by the drunken people in the audience.  That ended around 23:30, which was SUPER late for us.  We did get to see what happens in town on the weekends late at night; basically a bunch of teenagers hanging out and walking around.  We got on our bus at midnight, and were completely exhausted.  My bed was so awesome that night.

Today (Sunday) was my favorite day thus far, although it was definitely the hottest.  It was about 36 Celsius, however that converts.  We guessed around 90 or so.  There was a breeze, but not as much as we have been used to.  It was also very humid; needless to say, we sweated through our shirts and sunscreen pretty easily.  We went to Orana Wildlife Reserve today, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to go to Christchurch, and not Auckland (the other big city in NZ).  Check out their website for the basic info. (Seriously do, it is awesome).  We did two “encounters” while we were there (paid extra things to do).  First, we walked around for quite a bit to see the animals.  We saw tigers, one of which jumped to a piece of meat way up on a stump (probably about 10 ft tall) from another stump (about 15 ft away); this was awesome!  We also saw cheetahs, rhinos, lemurs, gibbons, ostriches, emus, etc.  There was a kiwi exhibit, but the kiwi didn’t come out when we were there (twice) L.  The first encounter we went on was the Lemur Encounter.  We got to go into their exhibit and hand-feed them bananas!  It was awesome, see picture:

The second encounter was the Lion Encounter.  What this is essentially is a big cage strapped to the end of the truck that you go out into the exhibit in.  One lion was on top of the cage the entire time, and the others were around the sides.  The keepers fed the lions through the fencing; it was really unbelievable.  I was probably 3 feet from a pack of lions!  See picture:

It was super exhausting to be out so long in the heat and sun, so we were pretty tired by 16:00.  We went back to our hostel, and got food at a fish and chips place.  Chips are French fries, and they are excellent.  However, we ordered way too many (who knew a scoop of chips was like 3 cups?) and have some leftovers to eat later.  And now, I am typing my blog.  We might watch a movie or something.  The nice thing about the hostel is they give us free Internet-up to 20MB a day.  We have used (between the 3 of us) about 6MB so far.  So, I will be uploading pictures and the like on Facebook tonight probably.  Watch for those. Also, check out our video blog (link is in an earlier post on here)-there will be a couple videos up to watch!  Cheers!

Looking ahead: Whale watching tomorrow, then Tuesday a scenic railroad trip across the entire South Island, leaving Wednesday for Sydney!