Christchurch Day 2

Today was a very interesting day. Where do we start? We woke up late and went into town to confirm our tours for Queenstown at their local e-cafe and had lunch at the Rickshaw Express. After said lunch, we decided to go to the Aquatic Center and Kiwi House to finally get a look at a real live Kiwi bird. Sorry to say, it was so dark in there that pictures would not have come out anyway. The Kiwi is a nocturnal bird and flash photography isn't allowed in there.

The Kiwi is a strange looking creature. It's about the size of a large chiggin or duck and spent most of the time running around and sticking its beak into the soil. That's about it. But they were kind of neat.

The fish at the aquatic center were a bit disappointing (Although it was 100000 times better than Kelly Tarton's). We were mainly going for the kiwis, so it wasn't that big of a let down. The fish we DID see had lots of character. There was a stingray that kept coming to the top when he saw us at the glass.

After our animal encounters, we decided to take a trip up the Christchurch Gondola. So we hopped in the car and were on our way... or so we thought. We weren't exactly clear on how we were supposed to get there so like any normal lost couple, we pulled over to look at our map! Did you know that a dotted yellow line means no parking? There are no red curbs in New Zealand! Anyway, we pulled over at the end of a dotted yellow line area to look at the map. After about 2 minutes we heard the DING DING of a bell! We parked right at the edge of where a trolley is supposed to make a turn! Since the trolley was at a stop, I put the car in reverse to try and move. When I did this, the trolley moved farther forward?! Apparently the conductor thought he could make the turn around me. (Dude was on tracks?) I no longer had room to move the car! So I put the car back into park. We were already as close to the car in front of us as we could get. The trolley went by very slowly and we ALL though it was going to clear until ... there was a thud and a scraaaaaaaaaaaape. I looked back and nothing was touching the car? I looked in the side mirror? Nothing. The conductor decided to go for broke (hehe) and pushed on through! After he cleared the car, we all got out of our vehicles to assess the damage. Their running boards scraped the tire and rim of the car. No real damage and practically not noticable, but to protect his butt, the conductor took the info of the car anyway. (Idiot should have waited for us to move.) I tried to shrug it off because we bought the full coverage insurance anyway... but you know after an accident... :P That's all I'll say about that.

Anyway, we move on. Car's fine, we're fine. I don't wanna hear anything out of you, mom!

We go to the gondola. The conductor that hit us gave us directions. :P He gave us some pretty vague directions. I'm thinking it was to get back at us for scraping his runningboard!

At the top of the gondola, you get a great panorama of the city, the beach and the opposing bay. We took a 2 hour hike when we got to the top. I think we were the only ones on the trail the whole time we were up there. The bugs and bees decided to join the party because they didn't want us to be lonely.

Beautiful. Green mountains, blue water... move on. When we had enough of our fill of the view, we went down, hopped back into the car and headed to the coast. The New Brighton pier was surprisingly busy for the time of day. None of the shops or cafes were open, but there were quite a few people on the beach. Their beach is really long and shallow. I'm sure you could walk out quite a while and the water would still be at your chest halfway out to the end of the pier. There were also LOTS of surfers off both sides of the pier. Some of them weren't even wearing wetsuits. The surf was okay but it looked like they were all fighting for the small ones. Some of them were sitting out there for quite a while and not catching anything.

We headed back to the hotel and decided to get Thai food for dinner. Pad Thai here in New Zealand is absolutely NOTHING like pad thai in California. I think they used saimin noodles for their version?! The sauce also tastes quite different. We took a picture. After we were done, we tried to pay, but they didn't take credit! Luckily, our last stash of NZ currency was just enough to pay for dinner.

Tomorrow, travel day. 6 hours to Queenstown.

Wipercount: 36 and 1

Melissa's Sidenote: There's tons of public 'toilets' all over the city and stuff, but no toilet seat covers. I don't get it. Not even at the restaurants. Do they just go commando? or do they hover? Its a little disturbing that there's no toilet seat covers. I just put tp down. But that seems kinda gross not to supply covers.