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Published: March 12th 2008
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Christchurch eh? Christchurch is interesting, in so far as, it's not interesting at all. One would expect New Zealand's second biggest city to have some sort of pazzaz or life to it, but turns out it doesn't. We arrived (several hours later than planned thanks to delays at the airport) to our hostel at around midnight, feeling a little dazed and confused. Our taximan from the airport had helpfully informed us that we were now as far away as possible from home, a grand total of 13hours ahead. Thanks mate; god forbid any of us should be feeling homesick! We were greeted at the YHA hostel by a ridiculously enthusiastic porter (who in their right mind is happy about opening the door to backpackers in the middle of the night??), who shouted "COOL!" to every response we gave him. We lugged our bags (which, it should be noted, are bigger than EVER) up the stairs and tried to slip into bed without disturbing the fourth inhabitant of our room.
YHA hostels have always troubled me. Everyone loves them because they are well run, generally very clean, and they usually have fantastically well stocked kitchens. What people neglect to mention is
that they are also full of ugly Europeans, who consider themselves to be "serious backpackers", who constantly wear fleeces and hiking boots (not a brown waist belt in sight) and come well prepared with giant bags of food (just to make a mockery of our feeble attempts at dinner), who are always in the hostel, cos they either don't drink or they don't want to spend the money. Also, YHA's are popular with families (I talking about children for god's sake!) and the more mature sector of society. By mature I mean 70. Plus. In fact there were such a lot of septuagenarians in the YHA hostel in Christchurch that I did wonder whether we'd accidentally booked into a nursing home. LUCKILY we had planned a quiet few days, so all these factors weren't such a big issue!
Anyway, back to Christchurch. Ah, it's a lovely pretty little town really, and I do mean town; if it's a city then Draaaaawda's a metropolis. But it has a nice awfullllly English feel about it. We spent Saturday wandering around after a nice brunch on Oxford Terrace. Cathedral Square is a pretty, although tiny, focal point, and a river curves all the
way through town resulting in scenic little bridges every few minutes. There's a small Botanic Gardens at the north end of the city, and after sprawling under a tree there for a while we went to Dux de Lux, a "legendary" pub, which was strangely quiet considering it was Saturday afternoon. All of Christchurch was weirdly quiet actually, it kind of seemed like a fake town, with a few cutesy touches but not much character. None the less we had a few beers in the sunshine, followed by dinner and an early night.
On Sunday morning we went to pick up our car (wha hey!), from a delightful man by the name of Paul. Paul had a beard and wore a check shirt, and was one of the nicest people I have ever met. In fact, everyone who works in customer service, or dealing with the public in any way, should go on a training course with Paul at Road Trip Rentals. Not only was he helpfully, friendly and polite, without every being pushy, too slow or overbearing; we also got our car (and our ferry tickets to the North Island) at a bargain price, with full insurance. My only
request would be that Paul changes his name to Al, because it suits him much better.
Our new car is a lovely Toyota Corolla, which has yet to be christened (Madge the sequel?), and miraculously our three giant rucksacks squeeze into the boot.
Let the road trip begin! Our first destination was Lake Tepako, which appears around a bend when you least expect it, this crazy vibrant aquamarine pool in the middle of the mountains. It almost looks like there used to be a normal lake there until someone came along with a giant dropper full of dye and transformed it all to create an incredible contrast with the surrounding landscape. As soon as you get out of the towns in New Zealand the scenery smacks you in the face; all this gorgeous mountainous beauty. We didn't go too hectic on the driving for our first day; we had intended to go on up to Mount Cook, but missed the turn, and then decided it wasn't worth going back as surely we're going to get more than our fill of mountains over the next few weeks. So we continued on instead to Omarama, which I couldn't call a town or
a village, more a collection of a few accommodation options at the side of the road. We had vowed to be hardened backpackers in NZ, but after just two nights in a shared dorm we've crumbled and we've gotten ourselves a private little motel style room for tonight! In our defence, it's cheaper than a dorm, and it's got a telly. And Ugly Betty is on at 7.30pm. Sold!
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Una
non-member comment
yay!
Sounds like you're having fun dude - I especially like the Ugly Betty touch!