Travelling down the east coast of the South Island is fundamentally different to what we witnessed on our last visit where we travelled up the west. Gone are the rugged mountains that drop into vast lakes being replaced by the ‘Canterbury Plains’. And yes, it is very plain! Acres upon acres of vast, flat agricultural land with roads that go straight for hundreds of kilometres. However, we finally make it to Christchurch and with the weather in tow we set out on some high-octane activities.
In all, Christchurch is a very ‘nice’ place. It is actually probably a great place to work as it has a fantastic outdoor, bistro, park, lifestyle to it, but for visitors, we’re not sure it really has the wow factor. I think a lot of this is probably down to the lack of scenery. We have been completely spoilt by some of the amazing places we’ve seen so far, beautiful bays, rocky harbours, dramatic mountains and vast lakes – which make Christchurch just a little bit dull. However, it does have one thing that is well worth recommending which is the Antarctica centre. New Zealand is one of the principal countries working in and exploring Antarctica and they have a great centre near the NZ base which is quite eye opening. Phil and I…for some reason…sign ourselves up to stand in the ice cave where they wrap you up in coats and rubber boots and drop the temperature down to minus 18 so you can feel what it would be like in Antarctica in a wind storm…although they regularly have minus 50 down there. Minus 18 is definitely enough for us and we leave wondering why we thought it would be a good idea to stand in an ice cave and get frozen. Hmmmm. However, we do get to see some penguins on the way out – so all is well in the end!
We are also lucky enough to be there during the Chinese Lantern Festival which celebrates Chinese New Year. There are some amazing lanterns that have been shipped over from China and watching the dancing and singing that's put on in the park makes us very glad we're heading to China on our trip.
We are also lucky enough to be there during the Chinese Lantern Festival which celebrates Chinese New Year. There are some amazing lanterns that have been shipped over from China and watching the dancing and singing that's put on in the park makes us very glad we're heading to China on our trip.
Moving on from Christchurch we visit Omaru and then Dunedin before we head to our final destination of Queenstown. Both of these places we spend far too little time in unfortunately, as they are well worth a good visit. Dunedin is designed to mimic a Scottish city – Edinburgh in particular – and is crammed full of interesting old brick buildings. It’s a university town and has a really lovely atmosphere. As nice as all this is, we’re starting to get itchy feet and decide it’s time for some fun and dramatic scenery so we pack our bags and head off to Queenstown.
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