Christchurch, New Zealand (March 24-26)

Christchurch

Christchurch – We boarded the bus in Mt. Cook and four hours later arrived in Christchurch, the largest city in the Southern (or main) Island, home to about 350,000 people. There are only 1 million people on this vast southern Island and Christchurch houses about 1/3 of them. Its supposedly the most “English” of New Zealand's cities, so I was expecting quaint. Our hotel was in the Mideaval, Tudor style, which could have fallen under the quaint descriptor, had the inside been updated in the last 50 years. However, it did have an Excaliber sword lodged into a rock at the entrance. The first room we were given was so ackward, it didn’t even have a mirror facing the sink. Its interior looked like something out of 1955 England. It smelled. We went to pick up the phone to ask for a nicer room when the phone fell off the wall. They gave us a larger, better laid out room, but with the same type and genre of furnishings. It would have to do. Technology tidbit: The whole city has hot and cold water come out of different faucets. Really, kind of annoying.

We changed and then went to the "Strip" where the restaurants and bars were. It was right off of Catherdral Square, the center of town. What ensued was a mighty crazy evening. The Caterbury Crusades (the local rugby team) were in the process of winning their match, and we were warned that it would get a bit hectic when they won and 20,000 people to flowed into the strip party center. At 4:30 when I called it quits, the whole area was wall to wall packed.

As we learned from the locals, each restaurant turned into a club that played different music. We ate at Coyote, an adobe-decorated Western-American/New Zealand Fusion restaurant. Good eats. Glenn and I left, went down to Boulevard, where we met four girls, one of whom was a Maori Princess. Maori’s are the indigenous people of New Zealand. Most of the 600,000 Maori’s are in the north Island, many around Aukland. They are very well integrated into NZ society, but there are still violence problems around Aukland with Maori gangs. Our Princess was pretty cute.

The Maori’s are interesting. Unlike the native american’s, Maori’s are Pacific Islanders that arrived in New Zealand much only 1000 years before the European’s came. By that time they were joined by the white colonizers (mostly English), they had already hunted the only indigenous mammal to extinction and burned down about 10% of the forests. They were a tribal culture. They did not have a written language, but did pass on stories and customs through pictures and, of course, orally. The individuals are really big, like most Pacific Islanders. The men are born to be rugby players or bouncers. The woman could easily play those roles as well. New Zealand has put aside $1 Billion to pay for any incidents where land was stolen or taken in criminal way and $100 millions have been paid out already.

At Boulevard, we did shots and talked with our new lady friends. They were nice, but if in America, would be considered White trash. They were uneducated, married young or would marry young, had no aspirations academically or professionally and dated men of about their same caliber. The theme in New Zealand was that they just have a hard time keeping the younger motivated kids, who will go off to England and other places to earn a living and then might move back much later in life once they can afford homes. Because they don’t have the large supply of well-educated talent, companies are less wanting to to come and open business here. This is Philly to Australia’s New York/Boston/Wash Dc.

The party seen was awesome. Every place we went was spinning great tunes and we danced all night, meeting tons of people on the dance floor and around. Very friendly people locals and lots of tourists.

Starving at the end of the night, I stumbled to Burger King where I ate two whoppers consecutively and then hopped a ride back to Cotswald Motor Lodge , walking past the Excaliber. Too drunk to even kid around about pulling it out, and I went to bed and crashed.

Three hours later at 8:00 AM, the alarm rang and we were off to Akaroa, a perfectly pleasant day trip to a town on a bay that could have been Larkspur in Marin County. Our guide Peter was informative, filling in a lot of information on flore and fauna of New Zealand, its history and socio-political aspects of life in NZ today. At 1:30, we went on a harbor boat and saw dolphins and seals. Pictures in the picture section. Both have been hunted almost to extinction and are now protected. Sunday night we had Indian and packed. Monday all day we travelled