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Christchurch, New Zealand

Wednesday - February 27, 2008 - Christ Church

Christchurch is a graceful city that not only values its culture and heritage, but also offers year-round action and excitement. Best know as the Garden City, it also offers wine to whale watching, braided rivers, famous train journeys, rare dolphins, rural wonderlands and majestic mountains. This is definitely somewhere very different. The picture on the right is where the mariners got the exact time of day every day at 1:00PM. When the ball on the mast came down, all the captains in the harbor set their clocks.

This day that we spent in Christchurch will turn out to be a great day. We get on the tour bus headed for Hammer Springs. The drive up is about 3 hours, but well worth it. The rolling hills and trees were something to see.

The bus stopped for a few minutes at a winery. It was a nice rest and gave us some time to look around. We didn't buy any wine, as it would be too hard to get it on the boat.

We really enjoying seeing this much of New Zealand, it is such a pretty country. The hills of New Zealand are rolling hills, with lots of sheep and cows, and each piece of property has wind breaks all along the sides of the land, making for a lovely view everywhere you looked.

We had a lovely lunch at a nice hotel, built in 1930; located within the town of Hammer Springs. This is a small resort town where there are hot springs. We didn’t have time to go and see them as well, but what a fun town this would be to come back and visit. They had great huge track vehicles with rubber tracks to take you out on to the geyser fields. That would have been fantastic. Saw lots of RV campers in the area, so that looks like a great way to travel and see New Zealand.

On the way back, we got to ride the river! The jet boat ride was amazing and a whole lot of fun. We spent about half hour on the Waiau River, which is very interesting. In one way I was sorry we were going so fast, as we really couldn’t see all of the area around us, but it still was a great deal of fun.

Coming back towards town we drove through the Southern Alps, passed the Hurunui Hotel, built in the 1850’s; where there is now located the Canterbury Winery. We stopped and had a glass of wine and a cold beer!

Tom and Connie had a good day also. They went to a sheep station and watched the dogs at work and the sheep being sheared.

We all got back in time for dinner and a show. So all in all, it was a very good day.