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Published: January 27th 2008
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At 9:50 am we flew out of Sydney and left Australia for New Zealand. Our first stop in New Zealand is Christchurch in the South Island. I learnt a valuable lesson at Christchurch airport and that is never wear a football shirt when going through customs. When I was having my passport stamped the guy asked me not to shoot him when he mistook my albion shirt for a newcastle shirt. Then when queueing to get my bags scanned I was pulled out and asked loads of questions mostly about drugs and how soon I was leaving the country. Obviously English football fans don't have a good reputation, its a good job my hair has mostly grown back because with a skinhead I probably would have got strip searched.
On the way to our hostel my initial impressions of Christchurch was that it looked and felt just like some places in England but a lot cleaner. Our hostel is overlooking the cathedral square right in the centre of town. Once we'd booked in the hostel I went for an explore and found that for the next week or so it is the annual buskers festival. I came out the hostel
to find a crowd of people watching a guy called the human knot. He was able to get put his body through a tennis racket, a squash racket and a toilet seat at the same time. Impressive but why?
On my first full day in Christchurch I did all the free tourist attractions like the art gallery, the arts centre, the museum and the botanical gardens. It was all fairly standard stuff but still nice to have a look around especially when its free. In the evening Donkey and I returned to the arts centre to see the buskers festival comedy club. We thought that this would be actual comedy but it was in fact a show of street performers who were given the licence to be a bit more adult in their acts. The show was pretty good and it was nice to watch it in the courtyard of the arts centre as the sun was setting.
My first proper trip in New Zealand was to be a Lord of the Rings tour. I was picked up at my hostel by a 4wd jeep and surprisingly met two girls from Stourbridge. Our tour guide, Rex, talked the
entire 3 hour drive to our destination. Fortunately he was quite funny and really knew his stuff about the local area and the filming of the Lord of the Rings movies. On the way we stopped at various points to take photos of the amazing scenery and I also saw my first alpaca which to me just looked like a llama. We eventually reached our destination which was an unbelievably beautiful place. Our destination was a place called Edoras, which is in the second LotR movie. There is a huge area of flat land which is surrounded by seemingly 360 degrees of mountains and in the middle of the flat land is a relatively small hill where an entire village was constructed temporarily for the film. The village was taken down straight after filming but the location is still unmistakable. We drove across the flat lands across streams and to the base of the hill. We then walked up to the top where we got an amazing view and we were told all about the filming. We also got to pose with swords and axes and stuff. I felt like an absolute geek but I really enjoyed it so I
didn't care. One german girl had been on five different LotR tours round New Zealand and had spent something near to 1000 NZ dollars on them. We then went and had a champagne lunch, which was awesome, before heading back to Christchurch. During lunch I found out that Rex had played cricket against Dennis Lillee once and he also used to play in a side with Chris Cairns. Rex also used to work in tv and he knew many of the people who worked on the LotR films and he had met many of the cast.
The next day I spent 2 hours in a travel agents booking all my accommodation and travel for the rest of New Zealand because some places you are not guaranteed accomodation. I then went and watched a few more buskers and went into the cathedral and up the tower for a view over the city. On the evening we went for a curry, which was of a very poor standard compared to some of the curries we have had on this round the world tour. The waiter also asked if I wanted my curry Kiwi hot or Indian hot. I went for Indian
but it wasnt very hot, I think I should of said English hot.
Today I took a bus down to Brighton pier. Strangely enough its nothing like Brighton pier in England. This Brighton was really small and the water was clean and devoid of any floating turds. I arrived to see the Buskers festival still going strong and a performer was trying to get people of the audience to re-enact a scene from a western movie using the medium of mime. The beach in Brighton is huge and the pier itself is quite small with a library attached to it on the beach end. The beach sky was littered with kites big and small and even a huge winnie the pooh was floating about. Although this Brighton is aesthetically better than its English counterpart, I felt it could definitely use some 2p machines and some fresh doughnut vans. Tomorrow I leave Christchurch and head to the Franz Josef Glacier on the other side of the island.
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