Christchurch, NZ

Our first day in Christchurch and we went directly to the world renowned Botanic Gardens. Regina was like a moth to a flame (or a moth to a campervan light). With many, many beautiful pictures to show for the approx 8 hours we spent in the gardens over 2 days.

But the gardens are not all flowers and fun, there were many locals who heckeled us all through the park. Putting up with the constant barage of tourist trappings is a small price to pay for these free gardens. Truly a sense of the peaceful here.

Regina looking like the most beautiful moth :)

Here is the church for which Christchurch was named. We unfortunately had to trade the gardens for the choirs that sing here every night, but the exterior is amazing enough. The chap on the statue is a founder of Christchurch. Apparently there was another key figure in the founding of Christchurch, but unfortuntely he traded his statue for a heiress kidnapping escapade. We only needed on statue for this shot anyways.

Here is a picture of the entrance to the gardens. The background building is an old college building. Many of the beautiful victorian and gothic stone buildings in the city used to be schools, that the were outgrown. All the shools moved out to the suburubs and, they are now arts centers etc...
The number 3 thing to do in the guidebook was a bit of punting. Punting is a verb, to which you apply to the punt, a noun. We however saw an adjective that rhymed with mooring, and decided on taking out a kayak.

A Kayak?
Ever been in one? Jay had once.
Need any life jackets? "Ta" (another of our favorite aussiei/kiwi-isms, its meaning is unclear, pretty sure it's used out of context here but the word has something to do with politeness and leaving)
Doubling the weight limits of a oversized two liter bottle? No problem
Rowing up river? We live in Colorado, we're practically bred on these things.

No real trouble ensued just wet knees and a half wet T-shirt for Jay and the real adventure of punting (extreme kayaking) on the Avon was ours.

Did we mention that the river was basically a pond and never more than knee deep? But very beautiful and peaceful.

Jay does his best to look like a confident pro of many kayaking adventures. Notice the wet knees, the half wet t-Shirt would come later when Jay decided you could simply paddle hard enough on one side of the kayak to straighten her out. This kayak was very smooth but did not want to turn. In the end Jay always reverted to the rudder technique. Hence the wet knees as the paddle wasn't quite big enough to rudder and the other end always dripped on our knees.


We ended the day at "The Holy Grail" a huge pub that had a movie theater sized screen designed for showing rugby. We could tell it was only designed for rugby games because it was showing golf and nobody was looking at it. I don't know if we'll get enough fish and chips on this trip, but we had better start eating better or we won't fit on the plane ride home!