Christchurch, New Zealand

Hey Again!!

Well after 8 months in Oz we said a sad goodbye. With a 2 hour time difference from Oz, we arrived quite late into Christchurch, so didn't get to see any of the city until the next day. Our hostel was right in the middle of the city, in Cathedral Square so we were perfectly located.
After a nice well deserved lie-in, the first thing we did was go to the shops to buy UGG boots, hats, scarves, gloves etc etc as it's FREEZING!!! Such a shock to the system coming from 28 degrees to 5 degrees!! So once we got all kitted out in our fab warm clothes, we went to check out all the brochures etc to see what to do for our few days here. There are 3 walks around
the perimeter of the city so I ventured along that evening to do them. It's such a nice city, all flat, and has a real English feel to it. Two of the bigger roads are Oxford Tce and Cambridge Tce, and theres a Manchester St. Need I say anymore!

We split up for the second day. The girls went to the hot pools of Hanmer Springs while I did the Lord of the Rings Edoras Tour. We drove right into the middle of the Southern Alps, stopping at some of the lakes first. They were fantastic, you could see the reflection of the sky, mountains and trees in them. And then we climbed Mount Sunday, where LOTR was filmed as Edoras, aka the Kingdom of Rohan, in the 2nd and 3rd films. The views from here were just amazing. And in the distance was where they filmed Aragorn entering Helms Deep. Our tour guide used be a TV director, and knew loads of the LOTR production team, so he had loads of information for us and loads of secrets from the filming and what to look out for when we watch the movies again. It was an expensive trip, but well worth it as the views were just stunning. And the guide definitely knew his stuff about LOTR and of NZ and Christchurch's history. I didn't know, but it was a dutchman, Abel Tasman, who discovered the place many years before Cptn Cook discovered Australia. He actually sailed down South of Australia completely missing it! But he did discover Tasmania, and because he was dutch, he named it after the dutch leader of the time calling it Van Daemon's Land. You might recognise that term from the years when the Irish convicts were sent over to "Van Daemons Land" Of course the Maori's had discovered the country a thousand years previous, but you know how Europeans are, and they claim to have discovered it.

The next day we headed off early to the Christchurch Gondola, 10km out of the city. It's a cable car up the mountain, where at the top there are options to do a few different walks. Up there you have the most amazing view of Lyttleton Port, and a view of Christchurch in the distance. The "mountain" was actually a volcano crater millions of years old. So we decided to do the crater walk, but given the time of year (ie winter) the track was full of ice, so we had to take little baby steps around. The views were fabulous, you got a view of the Cantebury Plains. Cantebury is the province that Christchurch is in, and there are about 6 Provinces in the South Island alone.

We've just arrived in Greymouth over on the West Coast, after travelling the TranzAlpine train across. It's rated as one of the best scenic rail journeys in the world and we could definitely see why. We passed by several lakes, and the mountains were all snow capped in the distance, it was gorgeous.

So our plan now is we've one night here in Greymouth, and we'll do the brewery tour this evenin here. Tomorrow morning we'll get the bus down to Franz Josef and the following day we'll do a full-day Glacier Hike. Really looking forward to that one! Alot of people who come to New Zealand say the hike is the highlight of their trip. After Franz Josef we'll spend a night in Wanaka, and then it's off to the adventure capital, Queenstown.

So until next time.....

Cathy x x