Christchurch 2

We saw THE SUN on Monday! We took the opportunity to return to the Botanic Gardens so that John could take some more photos. I think we now own the largest selection of photographs of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens - I am sure he took at least one picture of each bloom in the gardens! There is a magnificent rose garden where we spent a lot of time, as well as the dahlias and the herbaceous flower bed. My dad was a great gardener and we had a lovely rose garden in the home I grew up in. He also spent hours in his “herby border” which had lots of different dahlias which he painstakingly used to dig up every autumn to bury over the winter. So there were lots of memories for me in the lovely gardens here. Joking apart, John has got some lovely shots and it was a gorgeous day to just meander around and enjoy the sunshine. We also finished off the Museum which we had started a few days ago. We were most impressed with it - our latest visit took us through the Maori, and European immigration sections - lots of amazing wood and jade carvings and beautiful dioramas.
Monday was a pretty busy tourist day for us. Besides the gardens and the museum, we visited Rutherford’s Den which is where Ernest Rutherford started out his scientific life. Neither of us actually heard of him before (tsk tsk) but he was the father of atomic research and had links to both England and Canada, so it was an interesting visit (especially as it was literally right across the road from the hostel, opposite the Museum!)
In the evening, we went to a live performance of the Cole Porter classic “Anything Goes”. We both really enjoy his music. The play is a really silly farce with lots of mistaken identities etc. but it was lots of fun and all the lead players had really good voices and the dancing was great to watch. It was still light when we got out, so we went wandering a bit and came across a hotel that had the Australian Open Tennis playing on the big screen TV! There is a TV at the hostel, but it is usually taken by a bevy of German girls watching chick flicks, and there doesn’t seem to be a sports channel, so we have been a bit tennis-starved lately. We have got desperate enough to listen to the games on the radio which is very good exercise for our imaginations! However, at the hotel, we saw Federer dispatch Hewitt in 3 easy sets while we washed down the victory with a glass of wine.
I am slowly learning the language here and now ask for a “flat white” when I want a nice frothy coffee. I started out asking for “coffee” and that’s exactly what I got - a cup of black coffee unadorned by anything. We have had some really good meals (and I’ve done quite a bit of cooking here at the hostel as the kitchen is a lot more conducive to home cooking than the last one).
On Tuesday, the sun had gone back into hibernation, so we jumped on a bus and went to Lyttleton which is the port for Christchurch. The harbour was formed by a volcanic eruption so it’s pretty much circular. Not a lot going on there, but we had some really good fish and chips served up in grease-proof paper (I guess no-one uses newspaper any more) and John was thrilled to see a huge Spanish yacht in the dry dock. More photographs ……
On Wednesday, we hired a car and drove to the Banks Peninsula (just south east of Christchurch) to a town called Akaroa. Like Lyttleton, the bay was formed by volcanic action so the scenery is spectacular - and the sun was shining! We stopped at quite a few places along the way for “photographic opportunities“ - my favourite was the one where the clouds were pouring across the mountains like a blanket.. We had a wonderful lunch at a little town on the way called Little River - it looked like a complete dump but I had read (the benefits of doing homework!) that it was worth stopping for a meal - and it really was. We had a fantastic lunch surrounded by gorgeous art work - most unexpected given the general ambience! Akaroa itself is the only French settlement in the area and was a very pretty little town. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend there (see next paragraph!) but it was very pretty and worth the visit. We walked along the shore and dabbled our fingers in the southern ocean for the first time! On the way home we stopped at a beach called Birdlings Flat where I had read that you can find gemstones, particularly agates, on the beach. It was a pretty desolate, pebbly beach with a huge undertow which you could see with every wave. I wouldn’t know an agate if it jumped up and bit me, but I found some pretty green, yellow and brown stones. We met another couple “fossicking” and the wife showed me her agates - colourless and translucent!
When we picked up the car, we went searching for a camping store so John could buy some supplies for our van trip. The vans don’t come with any kind of awning, so you can’t get out of rain or sun except by sitting in the van (which is pretty tiny). So in Australia, we bought some extendable tent supports and a tarp so he could rig up an awning for us. We had to leave the tent supports behind (don’t think the airline would have approved of long, hard, pointy things) so we had to buy more of them plus another tarp (we’ve learned about the weather here!), a hammer to bash to tent pegs in with plus all kinds of other “stuff” (which we will have to donate to our bed and breakfast hosts in Auckland at the end of our journey - I’m sure they will be thrilled!) So that took quite a while, but I know I will appreciate it when I have a place to hide from the elements!
My friends and family who know about my “oddity” of visualizing parking spaces will be glad to know that my ability has traveled with me! We wanted to park the rental car right outside the hostel so that it would be easy to load up, but the buskers festival is still on and we are right in the middle of the action, so parking spaces are definitely at a premium. I had told John on the way home to visualise a parking space for us and he did the usual eye-rolling thing which I am quite accustomed to. We arrived home from Akaroa just before 6 last night (when parking meters are no longer in action) and as we turned the corner into our street, a car pulled out from RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR HOSTEL! So there - it works!!!
We are packing up today and loading our tiny little rental car with all our camping gear plus all our luggage which seems to expand exponentially. I don’t understand how we can have sent home 3 parcels of stuff, not bought a whole lot more and yet still have