A taste of Kiwi

  Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand
Thursday, January 1, 2009

After a 6 am wakeup call following New Year's, I made my way to the airport to fly to Christchurch, New Zealand,  on the South Island.  Since I didn't have to be anywhere until January 9th for orientation,  I thought this would be a great chance to visit New Zealand.  On the advice of several friends from Kellogg, I decided to do the South Island, which is very sparsely populated but incredibly beautiful.  I flew into Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island and the 3rd largest city in New Zealand, with about 350,000 people.  The country of New Zealand is roughly the same size as Great Britain, but has only 4 million people as compared to Britain's 60 million, to give you some perspective on the lack of density.

Flying into New Zealand, I was extremely excited, probably even more so than I was flying into Australia.  The South Island is mostly mountainous, consisting primarily of the Southern Alps mountain range.  We flew extremely low over the mountains because you need to land in Christchurch shortly after clearing them, so I got a great look at the snow-capped peaks, despite it being summer in NZ.  After landing, I took a $5 bus to my hostel, the Base backpackers.  As I would come to learn, there is a Base backpackers in pretty much every city in Australia and NZ, and they are typically fairly nice and are clean, so they make a great option when traveling.  They also have a reputation as attracting partiers.  However, as I would discover, very little partying is apparently done in New Zealand on New Year's Day. 

After getting set up, I walked Christchurch on foot.  Christchurch's primary tourist attraction is a large Anglican Catherdral on a large square. My hostel was in a perfect location, on the Cathedral Square, which is the main center of town.

Christchurch Cathedral

There is a tram that follows most of the sites in town, so I followed it, and was actually pretty impressed with Christchurch.  It's an extremely green city with huge parks, and a former college made up of gothic-style buildings is now a huge center for the arts, which was pretty  cool as well.  Undoubtedly the highlight of the city, though, was the botanic gardens, which is one of the world's largest city parks.  I have never seen so many unbelievable trees in one place (the park is noted for having a huge variety of trees).  The peaceful Avon river also floats through town and the gardens, and gondolas float by with tourists on board all day. Christchurch is also very modern, with large office buildings that are probably 15-20 stories tall and there is a Crowne Plaza hotel right in the center of town.  

Gondola

As for socializing, Christchurch was probably the deadest city of any size I've ever seen.  Even during the day, I hardly saw anyone in the streets, despite it being a beautiful day.  I'm guessing it was because of the New Year's holiday.  I sat in a bar for dinner and talked with the bartenders and a few locals for a while.  I learned that New Zealanders love the WWE (one guy could rattle off all of the past champions from the 80's) and that one of my bartenders was 16 years old and also a high school dropout.  Two of the guys I talked to, one 40ish and another in his 30s, had never been off the south island of New Zealand in their lives.  After these riveting discussions, I moved along to an Irish pub, where I talked to the bartenders, and met a Canadian sitting at the bar in his 40's who has been traveling for the last 17 years.  He said he started a company about 25 years ago, sold it for a chunk of money 17 years ago, and has only been traveling ever since.  He hasn't been back to his home in 3 years.  These are the kinds of people  I usually run into when I travel.  I asked him his favorite place he's been, and he promptly responded London, which I thought was pretty interesting.  I called it quits pretty early since there wasn't much going on and I had an early bus in the morning.  At the hostel that night, shared a room with some of Salzy's Dartmouth brethren that night- two juniors who were heading back in a few days for their junior spring semester.