Day 8 - Westport to Christchurch

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The rafting trip was not cancled. A couple from the Netherlands signed up for the trip last night. We met up with the rafting company at thier base close to Westport and then followed them up to the take out point. It saved us about an hour's drive east after the rafting trip was done.

Then we hopped on the van with the raft and drove to the put in point about 11 km up the buller gorge. The trip was lots of fun. A good introduction to rafting for Chris. There were a few nice rapids and everyone worked well together. Anne got out and floated down the river through some small rapid a couple of times. Tony took a swim twice too, but only once was intentional. Tony also jumped off the side of the canyon inot the water. It was about a 9 m jump and he was shaking when he got back into the boat.

We also went down one of the last rapids while standing up in the boat and bracing on each other in a circle. Amazingly enough no one fell in.

After we pulled out and peeled off the wetsuits and other gear we were introduced to one of New Zealand's less famous animals - The biting sandfly. The bites don;t hurt much but they leave ugly red welts for weeks.

Our guides cooked up a great sausage lunch for us after the trip and then we said goodbye and headed off to the east coast.

We stopped at New Zealand's longest swinging bridge and for only $5NZ each walked across. The view from the middle of the bridge was great but Anne didn't feel like looking down.

After a bit of driving through the passes we got to the east side of the island. The landscape is very different from the West Coast. It's much dryer and there are gorse bushes everywhere. The gorse is in full bloom right now and we saw entire valleys and hillsides covered in yellow.

The rest of the drive to Christchurch was uneventfull except for dinner. We stopped at a small cafe outside of Christchurch area. Tony tried lamb for the first (and probably last) time. The face he made was priceless. Kind of like the one he makes for tomatoes.

We pulled into the Huntingdon Grange Farmstay last night at about 7:30PM. www.huntingdongrange.co.nz One of the nicest places we've stayed so far. We settled in last night with a bottle of wine and a rousing game of Contract Rummy (otherwise known as The Seven Round Game).

We are going to get a late start tommrow and head into Christchurch proper to check out the Canturbury College for Matt Rogge and the city center.

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Photos

Rafting
Hamster is ready to go rafting. However, upon further reflection, all that water would really mess up his singing ability, so he decided to go on the van.

People Rafting
Hamster let his people go rafting, though. It was COOOLD.

WAY up
A swinging bridge.... very high, over moving water, with a grate bottom. I bounced when we walked. Very Frightening... FUN!

Comments

[katt]

hamster
...silly hamster... :P What's its name?