Drama on the High Sea - Christchurch

Wednesday December 14th

Today ended up being another long, long day, although we didn't realize it when we started out. We got up early again since we had a 6:45 bus to pick us up to take us to the airport. The journey was uneventful and we made it to Christchurch with no problems. We hadn't intended to rent a car since our travel agent assured us that we could make arrangements while we were there.... but I don't think that she ever caught on that we like doing things like seeing native animals more than we like touring historic monuments. Because of that, we decided to rent a car so that we'd have more flexibility in getting out to Akaroa, which is the real reason that we wanted to come to Christchurch.

We dropped our luggage off at our hotel and drove over to Akaroa which was about 80 minutes away over very very curvy roads. Akaroa is a small seaside town that houses the Hector Dolphins which are only found in New Zealand. These are the smallest dolphins in the world and are also the only dolphins that have a rounded dorsal fin. We scheduled a harbor cruise to see them and made it in plenty of time to grab lunch before checking in. However, when we checked in, we were told that there was a little bit of a crisis and that our boat would be delayed. We later found out that the crew on a fishing boat had an with a winch and our boat had to go out to it because they had a vet and a firefighter who was EMT trained that would be able to assist. They also had to transport the rest of the people on board the ship back to land.

After all of that had been sorted out (about 20 minutes later), we were off. The cruise was very nice, we got to see tons of Hector Dolphins playing around the ship. We also saw seals, a penguin and plenty of birds. It was a lot of fun.

After that, we drove back to Christchurch and headed downtown to do some shopping. We finished shopping early to try and do some punting (which is where they ferry you around in the river.... sort of like a gondola in Venice). However, they were closed. So we headed back downtown to do some more shopping. That's when we found out that New Zealand likes to knock off for the day early. All of the stores downtown closed at 5:30! So, we headed down to the Kiwi Encounter which offers evening tours and ate an early dinner. The dining room was adjacent to where they keep all sorts of deer, so between courses, we ran out to feed the deer and get some photos. After that, we got a private tour of the Kiwi encounter which had tons of different wildlife... but the star of the show was the large kiwi house that had 8 kiwi's roaming around. Unlike the other time we saw kiwi, these were very active and we got to be very close to them. It was amazing.

After that, it was still rather early for us, so we looked around to see if we could find anything that was open. We ended up going to a theatre that was showing King Kong at 9:00, so we went in a little late. We had wanted to see King Kong in New Zealand anyway since it was filmed here. The movie didn't get out until 12:30 which was bad since we had to be up at 5:30 to make it to the airport. We didn't get much sleep, but the next day started our Australia leg of the journey, so we were still excited.

Greg