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Published: July 31st 2010
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Whale WatchingSo the seventh week in New Zealand mainly consisted of me & Cerri finding our feet in Christchurch. We spent the majority of our time getting used to our new surroundings, as we had decided to settle here for a while to find some work to fund the rest of our trip. Working wasn’t originally on our agenda, but due to the recent political ongoings in Australia we might not get our visa’s through till 2012, so back to work we go! During the next 2 weeks we scowered the internet looking for jobs and handed out plenty of CV’s in shops around the city centre, and just for Matt & Kate we even asked in Jay Jays! I even decided against using the kitchen scissors and actually paid for a haircut, ready to impress any new possible employers! Whilst we were waiting for the job offers to start rolling in we also helped baby sit our new landlords nieces for the day by taking them to the theatre to see a kiddy’s show, I think Cerri enjoyed it more than them! We also spent a couple of days back down at New Brighton, which has the best library set right
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The Border Collie Statue on the beach with a cracking view of waves crashing on the sand. Cerri also had an ulterior motive for going back to New Brighton and that was because she wanted to splash some cash at the Quicksilver outlet store we found when we first visited with the rest of the Caravan Club! She did get a little carried away in the shop (2 hours later!!!) but I used it as an excuse to buy myself a few bits! Whilst we were at the beach we did see the famous sand artist Peter Donnelly who was featured on Billy Connelly’s show about New Zealand. During our second week of living on Fern Drive, we were joined by a new house mate from sunny Blackpool called Kim. She has got a job as the assistant manager of the local New World Supermarket, so we we're looking forward to getting some discount there! During our hunt for work we walked round the city centre taking in all the sites as well, we visited the Art Gallery, had a nose inside the Cathedral, popped into the Museum which a piece of Kiwiana history in the form of Fred & Myrtles Paua Shell House
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Penguin Crossing, Oamaru (random!) and had a wonder through the large Botanical gardens. Part of our search for a job saw us undertake some tests at a recruitment agency (never again!), we had to do some data inputting, with numeric and alphanumeric tests. I was fast on the tests but not very accurate, where as Cerri was a bit slower but had a much higher accurancy rate averaging 98%! Luckily they let us . . . well me, to take the tests a few times to get a better average score!
At the weekend Mel kindly offered to take us to a small seaside port town outside Christchurch called Lyttleton, enroute we stopped off at an old historical medieval looking building called Sign of the Takahe, located high on the Cashmere Hills which had unsurpassed views over Christchurch City and the Southern Alps. Whilst Mel was being our chauffeur for the day she proceeded to tell us a little bit about herself….. and how she meets people off the internet, at this point we looked at each other as if to say “what the hell have we let ourselves in for!!!” After a brief visit to Lyttleton Mel dropped us off at
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Moeraki Boulders a suburb of Christchurch called Sumner. Here we strolled along the sunny beach, stopped off for a spot of lunch on the beach front and we even had a ice cream during the winter afternoon; not up to Macaris high standard though!
Now for some bizarre reason houses in New Zealand are poorly insulated, especially the one we are currently living in! Our house isn’t cold its freezing! So every night we go to bed with 2 hot water bottles each, wrapped up in our thermals, whilst cwtching up for warmth! We decided to get away from the cold of our house in Christchurch and escape for a few days, so we hired a car to go and see all the bits of the South Island we missed whilst on tour with the Caravan Club. This time we thought we’d opt for something a bit smaller than BIG FAT SUE and went to the other extreme hiring a tiny Daihatsu Sirion, which in keeping with the Gavin & Stacey theme we named Doris the Daihatsu! First stop on our mini trip was a town called Akaroa, in the Banks Peninsula. Akaroa was a 75 km drive from Christchurch and
is a historic French and British settlement nestled in the heart of an ancient volcano. The drive to the town was pretty spectacular, the usual windy roads going up, down and around sharp bends but this time it wasn’t in a 7 metre monster of a caravan. We had a walk around the quaint little town and a nice picnic before getting back on the road. We put our foot down as we were aiming to be in a small town called Oamaru before sunset. The reason we needed to be there before sunset was because this was when the penguins came ashore! Not just any penguins I might add, these were blue penguins which are the worlds smallest penguins, measuring in at a tiny 30 cm high. We arrived at the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony Centre as luck would have it half an hour before sunset. The Colony itself is a man made conversation area, where the scientists are able to monitor the effects of human contact on the birds. We wrapped up warm with our scarfs and gloves, took our seats in the viewing area grandstand and awaited the little tuxedo wearing chaps! 20 minutes passed by and
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Akaroa from above we saw our first group of penguins come ashore from their hard day of fishing, they waddled up the rocks shaking the water off their backs as we were told they do this as they are very hot from the swim. That evening we saw 54 penguins make it back home to their families, one even made it up the 10 metre high cliff to find his cave home! As we were leaving the Colony we were advised to watch out for penguins in the car park. We checked under Doris but there were no penguins but as we drove off we spotted one trying to get under a near by shed and two more huddled under neath a street lamp! Even when we got to our hotel for the night we could hear the little buggers calling out to each other as there was a nest in the hotel garden, which was nice at first but at 3am it started to get a bit annoying!
The following morning we popped back to the Colony to have a behind the scenes tour of what happens on a daily basis at the centre. We had an indepth chat with the
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Cerri & Doris lady who told us that they'd had their first 2 eggs of the breeding season laid last night and we got to see some penguins having a snooze in their homes. From the town of Oamaru we headed 30 minutes south to see the mysterious Moeraki Boulders and this time it was Cerri's turn to drive. The boulders are a number of huge spherical stones, found strewn along a stretch of Koekohe Beach near Moeraki. There are several stories of how the boulders ended up on the beach, Maori legend tells that the boulders are remains of calabashes, kumaras and eel baskets that washed ashore after the legendary canoe, the Araiteuru was wrecked at nearby Shag Point but scientists believe they were originally formed in ancient sea floor sediments some 60 million years ago. We made up our own theory, that they were actually dinosaur eggs which had been fossilised and washed up on the beach! Which ever theory you belive, they were pretty spectacular. A good few photographs later and we were back on the road, this time heading to the biggest thing in New Zealand, standing at 3754 metres high.... Mount Cook. The drive took us about 3
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One of the gang! hours and took us passed some amazing scenery. Once we'd arrived at the tiny village of Mount Cook, we headed straight for the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre. Here we warmed up with a nice cup of tea (how british do we sound!?) and took some great photo's of the Mountain towering over us in the background. Back on the road, we then made our way back towards Christchurch making a stop at the picturesque Lake Tekapo. We visited the Church of the good shepherd, which was situated on the lakes shore. Just some metres from the Church was a monument to honour a good shepherd's best friend, the Sheepdog. The sign on the bronze statue says that the grazing of the mountainous Mackenzie Country would be impossible without the help of the sheep dogs. The statue which was put up in 1968 is in honour to all border collies (the best type of dog!). We left Lake Tekapo and few hours later we found ourselves back in Christchurch but not for long as we were heading back up north the next day.
The next morning began with an early start as we were going back up to Kaikoura
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Kim & Cerri to try and do some Whale Watching, hoping for second time lucky. We arrived at the Kaikoura Whale Watching Centre after a couple of hours on the road, the sun was out and the wind was practically non-existant so we knew we would at least get out on the boat today. Cerri purchased some sea sickness tablets as there was a warning that there could still be some rough waters ahead and off we went. We boarded our boat for the day and set sail into the deep blue ocean. Within 10 minutes we'd spotted our first sperm whale of the day, literally 5 metres from our boat taking a breather ready for its next dive down into the depth of the ocean canyon below us. That day we saw 4 sperm whales, a small group of hectors dolphins, some different types of Albatrosses and a seal colony. It was amazing to watch the whales ginormous tail slap down against the sea, one of our favourite activities of the trip so far. After a spot of lunch sitting outside in the Kaikoura sun we got back into Doris a drove back to the baltic climates of Christchurch, as we had
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Sand Artist at work to hand poor old Doris back the next day.
Other highlights of our month in Christchurch have been an Irish themed pub crawl with new roomy Kim as well as visiting many other pubs/clubs along the way, as she tried to see how many Irish pubs we could visit in one night! Also on the pub theme, we visited the Holy Grail bar which has a grandstand built inside it to watch all the sporting events. A pub quiz at our local in Halswell, where we proceeded to finish in last place! And a trip to the cinema to watch Disney's Toy Story 3, which was bloody good in 3D!
On the Work front Cerri, through her gymnastic contacts back in the UK (thanks Helen!) has got a job doing some part time coaching at Christchurch's School of Gymnastics plus another part time job working at the popular clothing store "Valley Girl", very welsh! I'm working at a family run accountancy firm specialising in tax refunds, just doing some admin work. As we don't have our own car over in New Zealand we've had to get used to the public transport system and sitting next to random, smelly strangers
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Chrustchurch on the bus every morning!
We've decided that on friday nights we will go out for a nice meal, this is not only to get out on the cold house but so it feels like we are still on a fun trip, its nice to have a treat now and then! Top restuarants so far have included "The Honey Pot", who have ripped off Winnie the pooh as their logo and "Nobanno", which is New Zealands only Bangladeshi restuarant and is currently rated as the 2nd best place to eat in Christchurch according to our favourite website www.tripadvisor.com!
Ben & Cerri's Tip of the Month - If your landlord starts making a cleaning rota, start looking for somewhere else to live! Plus make sure the house you chose to live in over in New Zealand has a heat pump system!
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anonymous
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Loving the photo banjo looking good did you trade cerri up for a penguin sorry about the aus thing it came in when I was over there I thought you had it before you left I am sure you will be fine have fun catch you later luke