Our last few days in New Zealand...

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  Christchurch, New Zealand
Thursday, April 19, 2007

Alex: After a pretty spectacular drive up the coast we arrived in Christchurch and after a bit of effort and a drive around we found a hostel. We decided to stretch our legs and check out the area, it was a bit dodgy but as often happens also quite trendy with lots of cool shops and nice cheap places to eat (including our favorite a dirt cheap Asian food-court - yum). The city itself lives up to its reputation and is quite English feeling, with lots of Gothic buildings, a pretty river winding through the centre with folks punting on it! How quaint!

While here we met up with Martin, one of Dean's childhood friends, and his family. We went up to their house on the outskirts of the city and about 100m from the beach, so we took a walk along the beach, had a beer, had some tea. We had a really nice day and could see the appeal of Christchurch and why you might like to emigrate!

The rest of our time in Christchurch wasn't what you would call hectic, we checked out the art gallery which was good, went for a swim, wandered around a few markets and parks and just tried to see a bit of the city. The sad bit was parting with our beloved car! To quite honest we were just please it had got us around without breaking down in the middle of nowhere as we had feared, but it has been great to have it and really given us a lot of freedom which was nice after so many buses up to this point.

Our flight out to Melbourne was at 6am, so we had to get to the airport at 4am and being poor backpackers decided to get the last bus out to the airport and spend a few hours trying to get some kip in the airport. This is obviously a popular strategy as the were a dozen other people doing the same thing, some even had sleeping bags! Unfortunately the music in the airport was incessant, they dimmed the lights at one point but still the music continued.  To make matters worse an announcement came on every 30mins, which was invariably just as we were dropping off. We were glad when it was time to check in, at least we would be able to sleep on the plane! We actually got more sleep than we had thought on the plane, mainly because we were delayed due to fog. We all boarded, sat down (and in our case fell asleep) and and hour or so (I think) later got off, got some breakie and then got back on board!

Australia here we come!

Dean:  As Alex mentions above, being in Christchurch gave me the chance to meet up with an old friend - Martin.  It was really good to see him and his wife (Erika) again and to meet his two kids (Cameron and Sophie).  We had a fair bit to talk about and Martin and his family really looked after us.  We had a lovely afternoon walking along the beach, followed by tea at their house (with a few drinks)!  Great to see them and great to rekindle an old friendship.

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