Maori Country

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The flight from australia to NZ was painless with no delays or complications as we seem to be prone to.
Dave booked a hostel for our first night, as we landed around 930 pm and got into town after 11pm.
There was one problem, we never wrote down the exact name of the hostel and wound up trying to book into a place we had no reservations for. Dave checked his email and saw we were at the completly wrong place, and had about a 10 minute walk over to the right place.
By this time we were so tired because we lost 2 hours and it was about midnight and we go to bed at 930pm like I said.
our first day we walked a few blocks to the Sky Tower, and went up to the observation deck.
We got to see a person freefall from the top and also a guy was walking around the rim of the tower with a guide.
Then we headed over to the Maritime Museum, as this town is nicknamed the City of Sails and has a lot of nice yachts and racing boats around.
The town was nice, lots of walking around and exploring.
We stopped to watch a few cricket games in progress...but neither of us understand the game.
We decided to fly down to Christchurch, as we could rest a campervan down there and relocate it for a company back up north to Auckland.
So we booked a last minute flight to Christchurch...and arrived in the South Island.
We flew into christchurch without any hastle and read on our books that there was an Antartic Center near the airport that was really good to see.
So we checked our luggage at a locker in the airport and walked over to the Antartic center.
It was a little explensive for our budget, but worth it.
We got to see feeding time for about 20 penguins, went into a room where they make it feel like negative 16 degrees with the wind chill, and learned a lot about the environment and whats going on in Antartica.
Christchurch was a cool town, its easy to walk the entire town in a short time.
There is a beautiful church in the center of town, we had a beautiful lunch nearby the Church, and we took a stroll in the Botanical Gardens and wound up in a rose garden.
It was like being in heaven with the scent and amazing colors all around you.
We stayed in a really nice and clean guesthouse 5 minutes from town for one night and the next day we ventured to go pick up our campervan....

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Photos

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About to go to the observation deck on the Sky Tower in Auckland

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a guy who took a walk around the edge

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dave and backpack, he lloves it!!

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the "City of Sails"

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on the ground again

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a Maritime Museum.

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simulation of the boats the English took over to NZ

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our first sushi Train...SO FUN

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of course a Cricket game!!

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Dave pretending he knows what is going on during the cricket game

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outside a museum

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leaving Auckland for Christchurch

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The antartic center by the airport.

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it got to about neg 16 in here...FREEZING

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this penguin stands around on the rocks too often so they made him blue shoes to prevent blisters

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this silly one kept falling over as he was trying to walk

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we got a ride in this.