We finally made it to the south island of New Zealand. Last weekend Dave and I flew to Christchurch for a few days.
We flew out from Auckland in the afternoon on Friday. We checked out the town for the rest of the night.
This is the cathedral in Cathedral Square. Christchurch has a very European feel to it with the architecture and brick streets.
Dave by the Bride of Rememberance. I'm not quite sure what they're remembering.
By the Avon River.
That night we ate at a place called The Tap Room. You could order a meal from their Stone Grill menu which would come out on a heated stone. All your food would come out raw so you would cook it yourself.
Look how raw that meat and shrimp are...is? I never know how that's supposed to go.
We also did a little shopping that day. I bought a silver tank top that was on sale for $5 because one of the straps needed a tiny bit of sewing, which I could easily fix. Dave bought this awesome NZ shirt. For those of you who don't what the thing on his shirt is, it's a New Zealand kiwi bird. The beautiful wallpaper is from our hostel room.
On Saturday we drove to Arthurs Pass which is a road that takes you from the east coast to the west coast with a bunch of sweet tramping trails in the middle. One of the trails is Arthur's Pass which brings you to the summit of Avalanche Peak.
On the way to Arthur's Pass was a place called Castle Hill. Castle Hill was used in Lord of the Rings and also the final battle in Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We initially just stopped at the side of the road and took a few pictures from far away, but later that day we came back and ventured around the rocks.
On the road again to Arthurs Pass.
When we arrived at Arthur's Pass it was really cloudy and misty outside. We decided not to climb to the top because of the bad weather. It would have been about a 6-7 hour hike.
The hike to the Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall was only an hour so we checked that out. Here's a picture of the waterfall from far away.
The hike went a lot faster than is estimated. We made it to the waterfall in about 30 minutes. The waterfall is almost 430 ft tall. It was huge!
We climbed to the bottom of the punchbowl and got incredibly wet. Dave went right up to the waterfall and was drenched. I stayed farther back to get pictures and was mildly soaked.
This is a Kea bird. They kind of look like parrots.
We flew out from Auckland in the afternoon on Friday. We checked out the town for the rest of the night.
This is the cathedral in Cathedral Square. Christchurch has a very European feel to it with the architecture and brick streets.
Dave by the Bride of Rememberance. I'm not quite sure what they're remembering.
By the Avon River.
That night we ate at a place called The Tap Room. You could order a meal from their Stone Grill menu which would come out on a heated stone. All your food would come out raw so you would cook it yourself.
Look how raw that meat and shrimp are...is? I never know how that's supposed to go.
We also did a little shopping that day. I bought a silver tank top that was on sale for $5 because one of the straps needed a tiny bit of sewing, which I could easily fix. Dave bought this awesome NZ shirt. For those of you who don't what the thing on his shirt is, it's a New Zealand kiwi bird. The beautiful wallpaper is from our hostel room.
On Saturday we drove to Arthurs Pass which is a road that takes you from the east coast to the west coast with a bunch of sweet tramping trails in the middle. One of the trails is Arthur's Pass which brings you to the summit of Avalanche Peak.
On the way to Arthur's Pass was a place called Castle Hill. Castle Hill was used in Lord of the Rings and also the final battle in Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We initially just stopped at the side of the road and took a few pictures from far away, but later that day we came back and ventured around the rocks.
On the road again to Arthurs Pass.
When we arrived at Arthur's Pass it was really cloudy and misty outside. We decided not to climb to the top because of the bad weather. It would have been about a 6-7 hour hike.
The hike to the Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall was only an hour so we checked that out. Here's a picture of the waterfall from far away.
The hike went a lot faster than is estimated. We made it to the waterfall in about 30 minutes. The waterfall is almost 430 ft tall. It was huge!
We climbed to the bottom of the punchbowl and got incredibly wet. Dave went right up to the waterfall and was drenched. I stayed farther back to get pictures and was mildly soaked.
This is a Kea bird. They kind of look like parrots.
After Arthur's Pass we kept on driving the to west coast and saw the ocean on that side.
Because we didn't do the long hike up to Avalanche Peak, we had more time to stop at places on our drive home.
Randomly along the side of the road there was this cave with a smallish sgtream running through it that people would climb through. This was the opening. We went in a little ways to see what it was like and it looked really dangerous. The first part involved climbing down this "ladder" in the rocks while the stream rushes around you. We might have tried it if we had the right gear on.
We also stopped at Castle Hill again on our way home. And this time we checked out the rocks.
Every time I look at this picture, I see a giant nose above Dave.
This is another shirt I made. It's actually a tank top. Very simple. Easy to make. Took maybe a day or two at the most.
The rocks reminded me of the part where Gandolf asks Legolas "What do your elf eyes see?" So I made Dave pose like Legolas. Can you find him?
I can definately see the scenes from the battle in the Chronicles of Narnia filmed here.
Dave made a funny noise to get the sheep to look. It worked. That night we went to a restaurant called Mum's that served Japanese and Korean cuisine. We both had this tofu dish that was really good. So much better than that tofu from a box that my mom would eat.
On Sunday we planned on driving to the summit of Mt. Cavendish by Christchurch, which gives you a 360 degree view of everything. You can either ride the gondola up for $22 each and see the views that way, or you could drive up and around. We were told you get to see a lot more if you drove. So we did that.
However we didn't have the greatest map and ended up driving a total of an hour and a half out of the way and nowhere near the summit.
But we finally figured it out and made it to the top.
They're kind of hard to see, but the Southern Alps are on the horizon. The Southern Alps were used as the Misty Mountains in, you guessed it, Lord of the Rings.
After that we drove to the Christchurch pier.
There was a man making sand art. It was his only means of income at the moment.
After the pier we went back into the Christchurch city center and went canoeing along the Avon river that flows right through town.
We at a restaurant called Inferno that night and then headed to the airport. Our south island adventure was finished.