Last NZ post

Well, for those of you astute to our travel details, you would know that we shouldn’t be writing our last NZ post today, we should already be writing our first Aussie post.  But, alas, we have met our first travel snafu—our plane had some “engineering issue” and was delayed from 4pm yesterday afternoon to 730am this morning!!  Things worked out pretty good though—we got put up in a very nice suite, had a delicious airport dinner (really, it was good!) and managed to sneak in one last pint of black beer!!!  We are now sitting in the airport, waiting to take off—wish us luck!!

Since we’ve left Queenstown, we’ve been travelling on our Magic Bus daily.  We left Queenstown to head to Dunedin, which is a quaint University town down in the South East of the country.   This town is the world record holder for the steepest street—which of course we got to climb!!  The bus stops for everyone at Baldwin Street to say we made the summit.   And to make things interesting, the bus driver offered a prize to the first one up.  Well, the tramping has paid off—Steve won!!!  The views were great from the top (pics to follow—as always!!) and we had a great start to the morning with our run up the hill.

From Dunedin it was off to Lake Tekapo.  This is a very tiny resort town, which is known for it’s star gazing.  They are actually trying to make the sky above Lake Tekapo a world heritage sight because apparently the sky is so clear that this is the best star gazing in the Southern hemisphere.  I say apparently, because even though we had a wonderfully clear, warm day, the clouds floated in around 9pm and didn’t leave until after we did L!  Our afternoon was wonderful though—we had a nice walk around the crystal blue lake.  The water has a phenomenon where the mountain run off creates these little particles that perfectly reflect the sun, leaving this amazing turquoise colour.  It was quite a pleasant afternoon exploring this town and their beautiful lake.

From Lake Tekapo, we headed up to Christchurch, better known recently for the massive earthquake in February 2011 that shook the town core.  They are working very hard, but still haven’t fully recovered.  The tragedy of this earthquake, was that the worst hit spot was the Central Business District, not simply the outlying areas.  181 lives were lost and many many people are still displaced.  The town is designated into different zones, with the red zone being inhabitable and the buildings deemed unsafe.  If you were unlucky enough to be living in the red zone, you are still homeless—essentially all the hotels are filled in this city and we have been told numerous families are doubling up in safe houses. 

We had the wonderful opportunity to stay with a kiwi family in Christchurch.  Brock is part kiwi and still has relatives living here.  Exciting part is that they own a winery!  We were welcomed into their family with open arms and had a lovely evening exploring and learning about Christchurch with Shirley.  She treated us to by far the most delicious meal we have had in New Zealand yet, and allowed us to explore the winery and learn a bit about how the winery industry in NZ works.  To cap off the evening, she took us to a local Christmas light show.  This DEFINITELY rivals anything you have seen in Canada—this man has choreographed over 6 songs to the lights, and they play nightly.  In addition to the lights, he also has numerous displays of other Christmas ornaments, blow-up decorations and dancing santas!  It was a little different to 1) see lights without snow and 2) seeing people walking around in flip-flops (or jandals, as they are known in this country!!) but we agreed with Shirley that this was better than any light show we’ve seen before.

We are off to Australia--hopefully we get a Brisbane weekend with Mike and Kelly!!  Post pictures soon!