It is about 7:30pm here (about 1:30 am Tuesday, your time), and I got about 4 hours’ sleep on the plane last night from San Fran to Auckland, so have been up for about 30 hours except for the fitful airplane-seat snooze. I have kept busy today, hoping to sleep like a log tonight! <\/p>\n
NZ smells like San Diego, because it has a maritime climate, and when we landed in Christchurch (CC) this morning at 8 am, the city was still blanketed with what Dave & Susie would call the “marine layer” of fog. <\/p>\n
I am staying in a delightful, very inexpensive ($20) women’s hostel about 3 blocks from the city center and the old cathedral that is the centrepiece of CC. The hostel provides free bikes to guests, and I had planned to bike up into the hills to an old rest house that looks like a castle, and have tea and scones, on the suggestion of the young woman shuttle-bus driver this morning. But the *mountain* bike is very old and rusty, and the helmet is old and dirty, and it was about 90F today, so I lazed-out and rode around town instead, getting used to riding in the left lane (Patricia, you would have freaked out at my daring!). I poked around the no-car streets, had a smoothie, and then followed the Avon river around through Canterbury University (a beautiful stone Scottish setting) and past the Botanical Gardens. I stood around filming a bagpiper for Brandi, and then walked my bike into the gardens and discovered an absolutely amazing Sequioa tree. For all that the bike was great – It was a lovely afternoon, and I am now feeling my tiredness, and my bum. So now I am headed to find some dinner and then hit the sack early for a 6:30 am bus ride to Aoraki (Mt. Cook) National Park. FYI, I am carrying only a (too-full) backpack, and a 1\/2 filled duffle bag which did not make the transfer in SF, so they will be sending it on to Mt. Cook… nice! <\/p>\n
Here are some visual and sound images from the day – hopefully I can load a couple of pictures of CC to my site the next time I get to a cafe (likely to be Friday night my time). <\/p>\n
* They don’t have liquid soap, it is “flowing soap”.<\/p>\n
* I saw Mt. Tongariro (the extinct volcano I hope to hike just before coming home) from the airplane window, poking above the clouds.<\/p>\n
* When the streetlights change, there are 3 cycles – traffic and pedestrians one way, then the other way, then a high-pitched beep-beep-beep-beep-beep sounds and folks cross in every direction – car traffic is stopped in all directions. <\/p>\n
* On the plane as we landed in CC was a tune that kept repeating “and the sign said ‘long-haired freaky people need not apply'” – I have to find that CD! <\/p>\n
* NZ is refered to “enzede” and “Godzone” – a take-off on some famous person (I forget who) referring to NZ as “god’s own country”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is about 7:30pm here (about 1:30 am Tuesday, your time), and I got about 4 hours’ sleep on the plane last night from San Fran to Auckland, so have been up for about 30 hours except for the fitful airplane-seat snooze. I have kept busy today, hoping to sleep like a log tonight! NZ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lindystravels.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}