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Published: April 17th 2006
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Well just still so overawed by the whales, just have such a strong memory - it really blew me away being within swimming distance of such a fantastic mammal. Please lets tell Norway, Iceland & Japan to stop the killing now!
We are travelling towards Franz Josef & Fox glaciers - hoping we can hire all the gear - including socks - I have flip flops so hope boots are included. Have to say this whole trip has been bizarre in as much as I took absolutely no part in the planning. Jb suggested a week in the sun to help towards not having cj - and I was like - well so like, I wanna go to NZ - plan a route. Actually didn’t think anything very much beforehand -apart from where’s my pup - ok I know he was over 60kgs but he was my pup. Had a wobble over crufts -( have a fab apartment - 2 tvs! ) Anyway we have a living room so put tv on, channel surfing and crufts is on, and there is a chayo alaskan malumute (cj was a chayo - kennel name, breeder we brought from) really tried to sit
Pillz
available EVERYWHERE and enjoy but couldn’t, still in spitting mode ‘cos people still have THEIR dog! and I wanna have a really small dog in my bag to protect from everything! yea of course it’s gonna pass.....especially as we have a house to convert so we can do more of the same.
We didn’t know where we were going to stay over Easter, hadn’t occurred to us that places may be booked up or expensive over the long weekend, so had a quick little panic and then turned to what has become our faithful friend, wotif.com, an OZ/NZ last minute hotel site. After looking at the places we originally intended to go we realised that everybody else had decided to go to those places as well, so we saw a golf club resort just outside Christchurch where there was what appeared to be a great bargain. A 1 bedroom suite with full kitchen, lake view, bath and shower, cable tv, washer/dryer, etc., etc. for NZ$99 per night (£36.50, US$63). When we checked in at the clubhouse the guy behind the desk welcomed us, referred to our paperwork, informed us that we had already paid and raised his eyebrows. He said, ‘the
Akoroa
the drive in boss does sometimes do some special deals’, then told us to get our car and follow his golf cart to our ‘room’. About 300 yds later we pulled into our car port and he showed us to our ‘room’. After showing us round, his comment was, ‘room OK for you?’. Well yes it was, quite easily the best place we’ve stayed in NZ. As well as all the stuff above, it has terrace gardens front and rear (sunrise and sunset), two cable tv’s with the full range of Sky Sports, hi-fi and DVD. Still pissed there’s no broadband though, but then I am getting really pissed off with having to pay NZ$5.00 for 1/2hr OK’ish connection in an internet cafe. Also a $1.00 supplement to connect Uncle Mac to their ethernet, for fucks sake THEY should be paying ME to have the gorgeous PowerBook in their fleapit establishment in the first place. These people do still have a ways to go, elsewhere in the world you can go into just about any coffee shop and, for the price of a latte, jump on their wireless network. Jesus christ, here Starbucks doesn’t even have their overpriced ‘wi-fi hotspot’ available. But anyway
Akoroa
the harbour the ‘room’, or as we would call it back home, the one bedroom serviced flat, is fab, if only for the possibility of watching unlimited, uninterruped sport including Chelsea/Bolton, Portsmouth/ Boro, and all the rest of the holiday fixtures, and no moans from B ‘cos she’s in the other ‘room’ watching movies or NZ Idol, or America’s Next Top Model, or American Idol, or Will and Grace, or So you think you can dance, or Bewitched or learning spanish, or anything other than bothering me while I’m watching.........sport. That’s because this being an NZ city and it being Easter n’all there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO DO. This being Easter sunday you can’t even buy a bottle of delicious NZ wine to consume at home. Luckily we stocked up yesterday. When you come from sophisticated, secular northern europe it’s odd to find yourself somewhere that seems quite like home but places such emphasis on religious observation. Even odder when I haven’t really noted any great spirituality. Just as an aside, on tv news from OZ today there is quite a storm brewing over the fact that new legislation means that parents will in future have to request religious instruction for
Christchurch
on a busy Easter Sunday their kids, rather than having RI as the default and opting kids out if you don’t want it. Really, quite a fuss.
Went for a fantastic drive to a place called Akaroa, out on the Banks peninsula. Spectacular mountain roads overlooking a whole series of bays created by volcanic activity. Seems Akoroa was briefly held by the French back in the very early days, and the town has Rue this and Rue that and many of the bars/restaurants/cafes have french names and pretensions to sophisticated living and it gets at least halfway there. At least the bar we went to for a drink had some decent reggae playing and a rambling monologue about jazz chalked up on the wall. And a cafe that has internet and only charges too much for connection - no surcharge for Uncle Mac.
Christchurch is probably the most ‘English’ place we’ve seen in NZ, there is punting down the River Avon from the boatsheds on Cambridge Terrace (Oxford terrace is on the other side of the river), trams, broken beer bottles on the street, rose beds all over the place and loads of parks. The thing that makes you realise where you are - everything
River Avon
What a punt! is closed most of the time except the ubiquitous shops selling ‘Party Pills’, variously named capsules which contain benzylpiperazine (go on, google it) which has been designated a class D drug here. I’ve seen the future of legalized, artificially induced euphoria, and it sucks. Can you imagine the number of classes, and the regulations to go with them, that will be created if recreational drug retailing goes down this “Ann Summers”, R18 route. Keep it strictly illegal I say, otherwise we’ll end up a nation of shopkeepers.
Long drive to the glaciers on tuesday, then a couple of days to put together the final NZ blog entry in which we will try and put down all the strange things we’ve seen and heard here, and there are quite a few of them.
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frazz
non-member comment
depressing
OMG you poor people it must be so miserable for you to have to put up with such primitive conditions... I can't imagine a country that has no fast internet, unsofisticated people, dreary towns, shops shut on holidays and worst of all wash my mouth out, having to pay for your georgeous laptop to be hooked up to some fleapit establishments ethernet, I imagine you can't wait to get out of there but I'm sure the people you meet along the way will remember you both for your lovely smiles and good humour, have a lovely last few days of your trip maybe wait till you leave new zealand to do your last blog so that you dont have to fret over the slow connection. :)