Kiwi House Christchurch

Second day in Christchurch. Slept in AGAIN! We even put the alarm on but forgot to change it from Sydney time so were still up late. Had a lovely day (well what was left) in the botanic gardens (every city's got them). We also had a look around the museum which gave us the history of NZ and had a good Antartic exhibition. Most of the explorers and scientists who leave for the Antartic depart from Christchurch. Saw a kiwi today! No..the bird! Mind you it was cheating a bit becasue it was actua...

Had a drive to Otorohanga today to see the bird sanctuary. We saw Kiwis, wekas, moreporks and our favourite the Pukeko - it looks like a blue chicken with VERY long legs! There was a market on in Otorohanga so we had a wander around there and stopped off for a coffee. Spent the afternoon in Raglan which is on the coast west of Hamilton. This place is a surfer heaven in summer but was quiet today.

So today we flew into Christchurch on the south island. It was quite the turbulent ride down, with a bit of a drop that included screaming people, followed by laughter. Glad we can all laugh about almost plunging towards the ground! We made a new friend on the plane and got him to color in our Spiderman coloring book. Oh ya, we bought a coloring book and crayons in the Vancouver airport and we're been getting people we meet to color in our book and sign their name and country. Everyone loves ...

This was a very early morning! We hitched a ride with Chanelle's uncle into town which did end up taking 20 minute...boo New Zealand transit. The first half of this day consisted of sitting on a bus until we arrived at Lake Tekapo. What a beautiful place! Just a small town but the lake itself was enough to make the stop worth it. Picking up our backpacks we hiked to where Viki's sister was working. Lucky for us her sister worked at a spa so we quickly got our bathing suits on and got into the...

Forgot to tell you about our day at the strange museum on 17th October - The museum itself was closed in preparation for the summer but there were lots of other things there. We went into kiwi house where they make this glass room look just like the outdoors and things grow in it etc but it is in darkness and then lit up at night so that you can see the kiwi walking about in the day time. I always thought kiwis were small but they are more like duck size and they have big clawed feet like bir...

The first thing I noticed about Christchurch as I stepped off of the bus was that it felt very European. The cathedral is in the center of town. There is also the Avon river which really does have someone punting down it. The buildings are very old looking and there are a lot of great parks throughout the city. They did such an excellent job by integrating nature into the city. I walked to my hostel, Kiwi House, which was a 20 minute walk from the city center. I met my two roommates (1 from K...

14-02: De vlucht met JetStar was op de vertraging na prima. Aan boord kreeg je niks aan eten/drinken, je kon het wel kopen. Ik wist hiervan en had wat brood, drinken en een appel meegenomen. Op het vliegveld heb ik de Airport Shuttle genomen, een busje die je voor de deur van je hotel/hostel/huis afzet... erg handig en in de verste verte niet zo duur als een taxi. Ik had het hostel waar ik de eerste paar nachten zou gaan zitten al via internet geboekt dus ik hoefde niet op zoek naar een slaap...